


Gutted

by KillerSnotMonster



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Abusive Myra Kaspbrak, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Beverly Marsh & Richie Tozier Are Best Friends, Bisexual Richie Tozier, Coming Out, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Finger Sucking, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Hospitalization, IT Chapter Two Fix-It, Injury Recovery, M/M, Making Out, Medical Procedures, Minor Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Minor Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, POV Third Person Limited, Physical Disability, Pining, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-IT Chapter Two (2019), Slow Burn, Spooning, alas - stan is still dead, but after about a zillion chapters there will be some things such as, by which i mean they all get the fuck out of neibolt, so as you'll notice i've not tagged a bunch of sex things, thank you for your time, this fic is probably going to be around 50K, this is not going to be a smut fest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2020-11-28 04:41:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20960639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KillerSnotMonster/pseuds/KillerSnotMonster
Summary: In which "We can still help him" is true. Six Losers get out of Neibolt alive and have to face life after Derry.(Diverges from Muschietti canon toward the end of IT Chapter Two. Some light influence from the miniseries, book, and early scripts because how else am I supposed to do anything in this fandom tbh.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My very first IT fic! Posting for the [itfandomprompts](https://itfandomprompts.tumblr.com/post/187575229384/prompt-for-october-8th) theme, although I am a hair late due to excessive dithering. Diverges from Muschietti canon toward the end of IT Chapter Two.
> 
> Huge thanks to Kat ([strangergaten](https://strangergaten.tumblr.com/)) for their immense enthusiasm, and to [AJ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pushingcrazies/) ([darkwingdukat](https://darkwingdukat.tumblr.com/)) for saving a certain someone from being an absolute potato in this fic.
> 
> Dedicated to C, who first tried to get me into the fandom thirteen years ago. I guess it’s about time I came around.

Its heart had flaked apart bizarrely, Its body crumpling like an old rotted plant as they stood there together at the center of the cavernous room. Richie allowed himself one moment of relief before shaking himself to his senses.

“Eddie..._ Eddie _.” He’d promised he’d come right back.

Richie hurried across the craggy rock to Eddie’s motionless form and crashed to his knees, ignoring the discomfort. Eddie’s eyelids had drooped, his torso wound as gaping and bloody as it had been before. Richie realized he’d had a spark of unrealistic hope that Pennywise’s defeat would reverse it in some way. But that hope was now obliterated, and fear started to creep back in. But fear wouldn’t help. He knew that by now. So he tamped it down as best he could and repeated Eddie’s name.

No response.

“Hey, man. We got Pennywise, man.” Richie’s voice was hushed and babbling, but he couldn’t make the words come out any more smoothly. He touched Eddie’s cheek, then slipped determined fingers to Eddie’s neck.

“Richie…” Bev said from somewhere behind him. There was a rumble like distant thunder overhead.

“He’s gone,” Bill said gently.

“He’s alright,” Richie insisted. “No. He’s just hurt. We gotta get him out of here. He’s just hurt. Ben…” He couldn’t get useful enough words out of his mouth quickly enough so left Ben’s name hanging. There was another rumbling sound, a rush of air as rock started to tumble from the walls. He felt the fear creeping in again. “No. He’s okay. We’ve gotta get him out of here. Bev,” he tried. Bev. He could make Bev understand.

“R-Richie,” she stammered behind him, sounding on the brink of sobs. He turned to look at her. Her eyes were mournful, pitying.

Wordlessly, Richie grabbed her hand and guided it to Eddie’s throat. Her lips parted in awe as she felt what Richie had: the unmistakable rhythm of a pulse.

“We can still help him,” Richie appealed, looking around at the others. He didn’t think he could carry Eddie himself, but more elaborate words wouldn’t come out. His eyes met Beverly’s again, helplessly.

She nodded once.

“We can still help him,” she echoed, directing her sentence at Ben. “Come on.” She scooped her arm under one of Eddie’s armpits as Richie mirrored her. They hauled his unresponsive body upright, Richie clutching his filthy, bloodsoaked jacket to keep it from slipping onto the stone.

Ben stepped forward and lifted Eddie into his arms with apparent ease and started toward the passageway out. Bev grabbed Richie’s hand and they followed, Bill and Mike rushing along beside them.

Navigating the steep and narrow paths through the rock was no easy feat, especially with the rock beginning to crumble away beneath their scrabbling hands. Group effort was needed to pass Eddie’s limp body through the tight openings and to support him as they made their ungainly way back up through the hatch.

“We need to call an ambulance!” Bev shouted as they crossed the filthy water in the cistern. “We can still help him!” she added fiercely. She hurried her stride to splash along to Bill’s side. “Do you have your phone?” she asked as Richie followed her. Mike and Ben were close behind, Ben carrying Eddie again.

Bill pulled his phone from his jeans pocket and held it out to her dismally. “I don’t think it’ll work.” He pressed the button and, sure enough, the screen remained dark.

Ben and Mike caught up as they entered the sewer tunnels.

“Mikey, your phone dry?” Bill asked, glancing anxiously at Eddie’s pale form in Ben’s arms.

But a thought had broken through the buzz of urgent panic in Richie’s mind: Eddie, in his risk-analyzing foolery, had probably invested in some kind of anti-everything phone case. He turned around, trying to walk backwards to match Ben’s pace as he started patting every pocket he could reach of Eddie’s clothing. Ben caught on quickly and paused for a fraction of a second to give Richie easier access.

Richie’s hand came away bloody but clutching a phone safely ensconced in an OtterBox. Thank fuck. Ben nodded and they resumed walking.

“We can still help him,” Ben stated, as though a litany spoken with conviction could save Eddie just as it could destroy Pennywise. And hell, maybe it could.

Richie looked down at the screen as the group moved toward the bottom of the well. There was a password to unlock the phone. Probably something dumb like his wife’s birthday. He tapped the emergency call button and keyed in 9-1-1 with shaking fingers.

"Hi, can I get an ambulance?” he asked as soon as he heard the dispatcher’s voice on the line. _ Stupid! _ What was he doing, ordering takeout? _ Get it together, Tozier. _

“What’s your location?” the voice asked, unphased.

“We’re at 29 Neibolt Street in Derry, Maine. My...friend is hurt really bad. He’s unconscious and lost a lot of blood.” Was it a lot? It had looked like a lot. It wasn’t often he saw someone bleeding from the gut, so he supposed he might not know what a lot actually looked like.

“29 Neibolt Street in Derry,” the voice repeated. “And can I get a callback number from you please?”

Crap. Was this a thing? Did they actually need that? “I...don’t don’t know the number of the phone I’m using, actually.” He had Eddie's number stored in his own phone, which was as busted as everyone else’s.

“Okay. That just means we won’t be able to get in touch with you if this call disconnects, sir.”

“That’s fine.” They had the address. That would have to be enough.

“Can you tell me exactly what happened?”

“Uh…” God, he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to think about it. “It’s, uh, he got impaled through the torso. With...something.”

“Is the item still lodged in his body?”

“No.”

“What’s your friend’s age?”

“Forty.”

“And is he breathing?”

“Yes.” Wouldn't he have mentioned if he wasn’t?

“Is there a sound coming from the wound?”

“A sound?”

“Like a sucking sound, for example.”

_ Sucking chest wound. _

“No. I don’t...I don't think so,” Richie answered, slightly relieved. A wound that wasn’t a sucking chest wound was probably less serious. Right? “It’s...it’s lower. Not in his chest.”

“Are there other people with you?”

“Yes.”

“Are you in a safe location?" she asked.

“Working on it,” Richie replied, grimacing as he tried to find a good foothold in the well. He couldn't make it very far with the phone in his hand. “Do I need to stay on the line with you?” he asked.

“If you can tell me more information, or if you need instructions or support, I will stay on the line until help arrives.”

He ended the call and crammed the phone in his pocket. Several feet up, Mike and Ben were making slow and careful progress, both supporting Eddie's weight. Richie started up after them.

Once out of the well, they ran, for the rotted beams of the house were starting to fall. They didn’t stop until they were on the far side of Neibolt Street, spinning on their heels to watch, transfixed, as the entire building collapsed in a heap. Then Ben was squatting down to lay Eddie flat on the ground. Richie hurriedly repositioned his jacket so it was under Eddie’s back. Feeling another flicker of fear, he pressed his fingers to Eddie’s pulse again, needing to be reassured by that undeniable sign of life.

...Especially when his gaze drifted to the bloody hole punched through Eddie’s viscera, a thousand times more gruesome in the light of day. He tore his eyes away and looked at Ben as he stood back up.

“Good thing you decided to get ripped in the past twenty-seven years,” he joked faintly. A sour, wet feeling chased the words out of his mouth, and he staggered away from Ben to vomit in the middle of the street. It was mostly bile. When had he last eaten? Didn’t matter.

Because just then, shrieking sirens announced that the ambulance was approaching. And that was the only thing that mattered in the world.

The sirens grew louder as the vehicle rounded the corner, then quieted once it came to a stop, lights still flashing. Two paramedics leapt out from the front and came around to where the Losers stood.

“You called for an emergency vehicle a few minutes ago?” one asked while the other wrenched open the ambulance’s back doors. A flicker of shock danced across his face when he saw the state Eddie was in, but his expression smoothed into professionalism almost immediately. He crouched by Eddie’s head, felt for his pulse, leaned in to listen to his breathing. His eyes combed over Eddie’s body as his partner rolled out a stretcher. “Did you move him?”

“Yes,” Bill replied breathlessly. “We were down in...in the house.” He gestured across the street.

The paramedic looked at the wreckage of the house. Alarm shot across his face again. “Jesus,” he muttered before turning his attention back to Eddie. “Do you know if he’s on any medications?” he asked as he and his partner lifted Eddie onto the stretcher and secured him with straps.

“Uhh…” Richie fumbled for Eddie’s phone and tapped through to the Emergency Information screen. “There’s nothing listed except phone numbers.” Probably to call his wife. Which Richie was _ not _ doing.

“Preexisting conditions?”

“Fake asthma?” Richie answered hysterically. The paramedic frowned.

“We don’t know whether he actually has anything,” Bill stated.

“Any medical allergies? Latex, antibiotics, et cetera?”

“I don’t think so?” Richie answered, even though the paramedic was now looking at Bill. But they’d only known adult Eddie for a day and a half. They didn’t have the answers to these questions.

“Okay, well.” They loaded the stretcher onto the ambulance. “You know how to get to the emergency room at the Derry Medical Center?”

“Yes,” Bev answered.

“Go there. Someone there will be able to talk to you.”

“Okay.” Bev sounded very certain, all of a sudden. Businesslike.

“But…” Richie started. Paramedic One was getting back into the driver’s seat. Paramedic Two was climbing into the back with Eddie.

“Richie, come on,” Bev said softly, tugging at his sleeve. “Let’s go. We’ll meet them there.”

Ben drove. They piled into Richie’s stupid rental car (since they’d taken his stupid rental car to Neibolt Street from the library the previous night) and were at the hospital in minutes that felt like years.

In the ER lobby, Ben led them over to the desk, where he relayed their situation to the staff. A nurse came out from behind the desk to speak to them, leading them away from the ER waiting area.

“Your friend is in emergency surgery. He’ll be taken to the intensive care unit as soon as the procedure is over. I can have someone escort you there, but before you come in any further, I need to ask you to change out of those clothes. Otherwise you need to step outside.” Her gaze lingered on Richie and Beverly.

Richie crossed his blood-smeared arms over his dirty shirt. Bev looked down at her snug jeans, glued to her body with sewer water and blood and slime.

“I can get you paper scrubs,” the nurse offered.

“Yeah, I’ll take some of those,” Beverly said graciously, glancing at Richie expectantly.

“Sure. Whatever,” he muttered.

The nurse nodded and disappeared through a door.

Bill sighed shakily. Richie turned to see his eyes were widened against tears. Mike, his face hard, put an arm around Bill’s shoulders.

Ben glanced around at everyone uncertainly. “Should we get food? Coffee?”

“Do you want anything?” Bev asked Richie softly.

Richie shook his head.

“I think I’ll stay here,” Bev said to Ben. “But if you do go, I’d take a coffee.”

“There’s a cafeteria...somewhere,” Ben said, looking around for a sign. “Not in this wing.”

“We’ll find it,” Mike said.

And the three of them set off back through the ER lobby, no doubt to seek a shortcut that would get them into the cafeteria without nurses shooing them away for being covered in filth.

Their nurse returned with two sets of blue scrubs and two clear plastic bags.

“There’s a bathroom around the corner,” she said, pointing. “Keep your dirty clothes bagged while you’re here, please.”

Bev took the scrubs and bags. “Thanks.”

Richie felt like his head was full of water. The sounds from the ER waiting room didn’t register as more than a muffled commotion, and the lights in the hall were bright and eerie.

Bev tugged his arm. “Come with me,” she coaxed, starting toward the bathroom. Richie followed numbly.

She held the door open as she stepped inside the single-stall bathroom and set the scrubs on top of the paper towel dispenser. As the door clicked shut behind Richie, she went to the sink and peeled her shirt over her head. Richie leaned against the door and raised an eyebrow, but he couldn’t bring himself to make a lewd joke. Bev tucked her shirt into one of the plastic bags, then grabbed about a dozen paper towels and wet them under the faucet. She didn’t speak or look at Richie for over a minute, silently wiping the blood and grime off her body and then ducking her head into the sink and combing her fingers through her blood-matted hair until the water ran clear. As she straightened, she wrung out her hair and finally glanced at Richie.

“What did you see?” she asked as she kicked off her shoes. “In the deadlights.”

God, what _ had _ he seen? As he tried to remember, he realized there was some kind of block in his memory. The moments caught in the deadlights were lost time.

“I...I don’t know,” he answered slowly. “Did you remember right away?”

“I don’t think so,” she replied, shucking her jeans and dropping them to the tile with a slap. She paused for a moment, then seemed to decide she might as well ditch her filthy underwear too. Richie shut his eyes as soon as her thumb hooked in the waistband. That was a bit more of Bev than he was interested in seeing at the moment, to be frank.

Once he heard the scratchy, billowy sound of legs kicking into scrubs, he figured it was safe to open his eyes.

Bev grinned wryly at him in the mirror as she stuffed her jeans and underwear into the bag. “Thanks for protecting my modesty, Rich.”

He tried to smile back, but his face didn’t seem to want to work right.

“You want to change?” she asked, shoving her feet back into her shoes as she pulled the scrub shirt on. Her voice was still so soft, so gentle. As though she were dealing with a stranger’s upset child. He thought he hated it, except he didn’t have it in him right now to hate anything but the fact that somewhere in this hospital, a nearly-dead Eddie was stuck in emergency surgery all because of a stupid, miscalculated taunt that had seemed like a good idea at the time.

_ Let’s dance. Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker. _

His stomach lurched. He staggered to the toilet, but there was nothing left in him for his stomach to force up. He dry-heaved several times, then slumped against the wall, panting as Bev crouched beside him.

“Are you okay, Richie?”

“Fuck, no, I’m not.” He pulled his glasses shakily from his face and tried to wipe them on his shirt, just for a small productive thing to do. But as he raised them back to his face, he realized he’d only smeared blood across the cracked left lens. Eddie’s blood. “I am such a fucking idiot,” he muttered.

“Here, I can clean your glasses,” Bev offered, delicately taking them from his hands.

“No, that’s not—”

“Why you’re a fucking idiot?” she finished lightly, crossing to the sink. “I know that.” She rinsed his glasses and wiped them off, returning them to him along with the other set of scrubs. “Come on, put these on so we can find the waiting room.”

He wasn’t as thorough as Bev, only replacing his outer layer of clothing. The scrubs felt like if a threadbare t-shirt had been laminated.

Back at the desk in the lobby, the nurse paged an intern to take them to the ICU waiting room. It was empty. There was ugly furniture, a bad fake plant, a water cooler, and a silent television broadcasting a cooking show with subtitles. Along one wall was a window to a receptionist’s desk.

“Can I have your name and phone number?” the receptionist asked.

“Um.” Bev frowned. “We don’t have a cell phone, but we’re staying at the Derry Town House. If you have to, you can call us there. My name is Beverly Ro—” She broke off, brushed her fingers along her forearm. “Marsh. Beverly Marsh. You can call the Derry Town House and ask for me.”

The receptionist wrote this down, had Bev initial something, and slid the window shut.

Bev crossed the room to sit on one of the thinly padded chairs and tucked her bag of dirty laundry neatly underneath. Richie threw his own bag onto one of the empty seats and started pacing, hands stuffed in the too-small scrubs pockets.

Mike, Bill, and Ben turned up several minutes later. Richie paused as they entered the waiting room. Ben handed a coffee to Bev.

“We’re going back to the Town House,” Bill said in a tired, aged voice. “Clean clothes and…maybe some of Eddie’s stuff. Do you want to come?”

Richie resumed his pacing.

“You go,” Bev replied to Bill. “I’ll stay here for now.”

“Okay. I—” He looked like he wanted to say something more but broke off when the words didn’t come. “Call us if—if anything changes.”

Once they’d left, Richie felt the anxious energy drain out of him all at once. He collapsed into the chair at the end of the row, next to the hideous potted plant. Beverly moved to the seat directly beside him.

“This hospital is a verified level two trauma center,” Bev said, giving his hand a squeeze. When he didn’t answer she continued, “And there’s a level one a couple hours away, if they need to move him. I was reading something about it when we were here for his stitches yesterday.” She inhaled. Exhaled. “We’re lucky. A lot of hospitals aren’t as equipped for trauma patients. The levels go down to five, and some hospitals don’t have a level at all.”

“Must be shitty hospitals.” Maybe he was trying to joke. Maybe he was being serious. He couldn’t tell. His voice sounded too far away.

“You’re sure you don’t want to go back and take a shower?” Bev asked. “He could be in surgery for hours. We could probably catch up with the others.”

Richie shook his head.

Bev rested her head on his shoulder and gave his hand another squeeze. He had a feeling she didn’t really want to leave either.

“Thanks,” he muttered.

“We can still help him,” she murmured back.

“Yes,” he agreed hoarsely, refusing any other possibility. He leaned his head into Beverly’s and, somehow, dozed off.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you SO MUCH for reading and bookmarking and leaving kudos and comments!! There _probably_ won't be such a long gap between chapters after this, buuut no promises.
> 
> Made possible by my lovely betas [Kat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/katinderry) ([strangergaten](https://strangergaten.tumblr.com/)) and [AJ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pushingcrazies/) ([darkwingdukat](https://darkwingdukat.tumblr.com/))!

**CHAPTER TWO**

He awoke to the sound of Ben’s voice.

“...different clothes, so we brought his bag in.”

Blearily, Richie saw Ben place his duffel bag in one of the empty chairs.

“Thanks, Ben,” Beverly said, tired gratitude in her voice.

“Any news?” Ben asked, slipping a laptop bag off his shoulder.

Richie felt Bev shake her head and brought his own upright. He righted his glasses where they’d slipped down his nose and blinked to readjust to the harsh lighting.

“No,” Bev answered. “Just waiting. Are the others…?”

“They’re coming. Bill stopped for more coffee. We took separate cars. He…” Ben lowered his voice. “He looks pretty rough. He wouldn’t talk to us much.”

“What about Mike?” Richie asked groggily.

“We dropped him off at the library. He said he needed to take care of something. But I’m sure he’ll be here.” Ben took the seat across from Bev.

Richie yawned. He had a crick in his neck from sleeping slumped against Beverly, and his mouth tasted like ass. He pulled his hand free from hers and stood, his whole body feeling stiff and sore.

“I’m gonna go…” He trailed off, not sure what exactly he was going to do. Brush his teeth? Change his clothes? Punch something? He grabbed his duffel bag and went to the bathroom by the entry of the waiting area.

He hung the bag on the hook on the back of the door and stared himself down in the mirror, dimly surprised that the hospital staff had let him this far into the building. He hadn’t paid any attention to his appearance when he was in the bathroom with Bev earlier, but he was filthy. Grime and dust coated his skin in visible patches.

So why bother putting on clean clothes?

He left the scrubs on but wiped his face and arms the way Bev had done earlier, then brushed his teeth and went back to waiting.

In the moments he’d spent in the bathroom, Bill had arrived. He and his clothes were clean, but Ben had been right: He did look rough. His hair was smoothed back in an agitated way as though he’d run his hands through it at least a hundred times, and his eyes were very red.

“Hey, Big Bill,” Richie greeted flatly as he resumed his seat. “You don’t look so hot, you know that?”

Bill didn’t answer but moved to sit on the floor beside Richie’s chair, his back against the potted plant. He leaned his head against Richie’s thigh and set his coffee by his feet.

A lady on TV was making quiches. And then she made a fruit compote. None of it was appetizing. Richie checked the clock. It was nearing ten. Not that that told him much; he didn’t know what time they had gotten here.

After the quiche lady, a marathon of a barbecue competition show started. As he watched one competitor split a rack of beef with a meat cleaver, a realization rocketed into his mind.

“Shit,” he hissed, nearly upending Bill’s coffee as he jolted to his feet.

“What?” Beverly asked in alarm.

“Bowers,” Richie answered. Now that he was standing, he had no idea what to do next.

Bev’s mouth dropped open in an O and she rose as well. “The library.”

“What?” Bill asked from the floor, glancing between them with the appearance of a man who was completely fucking lost.

Catching up to Bill at Neibolt and going down into the sewers together had required a shift in focus. And who the fuck wanted to talk about having killed a guy, anyway? Richie’s empty stomach twisted.

“I fucking killed Bowers with an axe in the middle of the library because he was trying to murder Mike,” he explained in a rush, keeping his voice hushed and shooting a nervous glance toward the receptionist’s desk across the room. “What the fuck am I supposed to do?” he demanded in a whisper.

“Holy shit,” Bill said.

Beverly appeared to be thinking very fast, looking to Ben as she tried to find words. But Ben seemed as much at a loss as she was.

“Well, the library is closed on Sundays,” she said. “And today’s Sunday. And—and Mike said he needed to take care of something, right? He’s probably...taking...care of it…” She faltered, seeming unsettled.

“What the hell is he supposed to do about it?” Richie asked. “Dump the body in the Kenduskeag? Fuck. Shit.”

They were all standing now, huddled together and peering over at the receptionist’s desk. But the window remained shut. Low, panicked voices must be normal for sleep-deprived groups waiting for someone to come out of emergency surgery after a mysterious traumatic accident.

Or maybe the people of Derry just didn’t pay attention to things.

“We should call him,” Ben said.

Bill dug into his pocket for coins. “There’s a payphone. Down the hall.”

All four of them went. Richie had the operator put them through to the Derry Public Library. Mike answered on the second ring.

“Mike. It’s Richie. What the hell is going on over there?”

“Don’t worry, it’s all alright. I just tried calling you on Eddie’s phone.”

“Ah, shit. Right.” He’d forgotten. “It’s in with all my sewer clothes.”

“That’s alright. Listen, I reported the... the incident to the police, and they were here, and the medical examiner came, and it’s all taken care of. They’ll need to talk to you, but I don’t think you’re in any trouble. There’s a security camera near the front desk because that’s where the cash box is. It caught everything. And Bowers left a trail even before he attacked Eddie yesterday. From what the police said, he killed one of the attendants at Juniper Hill and stabbed the security guard.”

“So you talked to the cops?” Richie asked, wanting to be absolutely certain that the police weren’t about to come swooping in and drag him away for putting an axe in Henry Bowers’s skull.

“Yes, and they do want to talk to you. But just tell the truth, Rich. And try not to worry. They might come find you at the hospital, but...keep a cool head, okay?”

“Yeah. Sure. The coolest.”

“How’s Eddie doing?”

“Still in surgery.”

“I’ll be there later on. Tell him that, if you talk to him before I’m there. Are the others back yet?”

“Yeah, they’re here.” Richie held the phone out to the others, feeling dazed.

Bev took it. “They know about what happened at the Town House yesterday, right? We reported it and had to go talk to someone at the police station after Eddie got stitches.” She held the phone away from her ear so they could all hear his muffled reply.

“Yes, they have it all on record. Like I told Richie, it’s going to be alright.”

Bev offered the phone to the others. Bill shook his head slightly, and Ben shrugged. What else was there to say?

“We’ll...we’ll see you soon then, I guess,” Bev said.

Mike said goodbye, and Bev hung up the phone.

“What happened at the Town House?” Bill asked.

“Henry Bowers broke into Eddie’s room and stabbed him in the face,” Ben explained. “But he got away before we could catch him.”

“You left out the best part,” Richie added dryly. “Eddie pulled the knife out and stabbed him in the chest with it.”

Bill seemed somewhat alarmed by this information, but he merely nodded once as the four of them headed back to the waiting room together.

Richie and Beverly returned to their chairs, their hands finding each other again. Bill sat across from Richie, and Ben sat beside him, pulling a tablet out of his bag and getting to work on whatever Hanscom & Associates were up to lately. Bill stared into his coffee for a while but then moved on to staring at the wall. Richie’s gaze went back to the television. They were still barbecuing. He looked away.

As the credits for the barbecue show rolled some time later, a uniformed police officer appeared and had Richie come out into the hallway with him to answer some questions. Richie told him what happened as plainly as he could through the haze he’d sunken into. But he barely heard the questions, barely heard himself answering them. The police officer departed.

He paced the waiting room for a bit after that, and Bev took his hand again when he finally sat back down. They sat like that for a while, not talking until Mike showed up. He greeted them warmly and offered around a sleeve of crackers in case anyone felt hungry. No one did, but they all ate some just for something to do while they waited.

Richie checked the clock too often and found that very few minutes had passed each time. Bill fell asleep slumped against Mike at some point. Ben and Bev had started shooting each other soft glances that they probably thought were covert. Richie watched the stupid cooking shows. Bev did too, part of the time, but none of the others were facing the screen. Eventually Mike pushed Bill upright so he could get up and use the bathroom. Bill scrubbed his knuckles against his eyes and twisted to peer at the clock (about three p.m.), then moved to the floor beside Richie’s chair again and laced his fingers into those of Richie’s free hand.

“Long wait,” he said quietly.

“Yeah,” Richie agreed.

And the wait continued. Richie alternated between thinking of it as  _ waiting _ and thinking of it as  _ Eddie being in surgery _ . Neither was very appealing on the surface level. But Eddie being in surgery meant that people were helping him.

_ We can still help him. _

And waiting meant...nothing. Hours of nothing. Hours of pacing and knee-bouncing and distractions, of tired friends and increasingly achy bodies. Over the course of the afternoon, only two other people passed through the room, no doubt to visit their own loved ones in the ICU. Richie avoided eye contact.

At about eight o’clock, a man in a white coat came in carrying a clipboard.

“Are you here for Kaspbrak?” he asked.

Richie stood, his heart pounding in his ears. Bev and Bill stood with him, not releasing his hands.

The man questioned further, “Are you family?” 

Bev glanced around at the Losers. “Yes,” she answered. “All of us. We all are.”

He appraised them for a moment, then waved them along with him back down the hall. “I’m Dr. Schneider. Come with me so we can talk.”

They followed him and piled into a small meeting room. He sat down on one side of the table and flipped through the clipboard pages.

“I was one of the surgeons working on Mr. Kaspbrak today,” he began in a slow, matter-of-fact voice. “It was me and Dr. Franklin. She’s one of our best. You’ll likely meet her in the coming days; she was needed in a meeting on another unit tonight.” He unclipped a packet of paper and slid it across the table, pulling a pen from his breast pocket. “Mr. Kaspbrak is in the intensive care unit right now until we’re satisfied with his stability after the procedure. Our team had a lot of damage to contend with. I’ve never seen anything like it.” He opened up the packet and pointed at a wall of text with the end of his pen. “This is a summary, which I’m also going to tell you now. One thing we did was stabilize the vertebral column with a titanium implant…”

For the next couple minutes it was as though Dr. Schneider was bellowing the words at Richie through a megaphone. It all felt so loud, yet only certain words stuck, reverberating tinnily in his head. And some of them were jargony. ...Thoracic fusion… Bone graft… Complete spinal cord injury… Small bowel resection… Ileostomy… Split-thickness skin grafting… Nephrectomy. 

Periodically he would say “And I have some literature about that here” and slide another page or pamphlet across the table. Bev, who was seated directly across from the doctor, peered at the pages, her expression strangely serene. Richie stared at the titles of the pamphlets but seemed to have forgotten how to read words. The general gist he got was that a few things had been taken out, a few things had been put in...and Eddie probably wouldn’t walk again.

Dr. Schneider finally wrapped it up with “If you have any questions we can schedule a discussion once I’ve met with the patient himself.”

They all sat in silence for a moment, digesting all that had been said.

Richie cleared his throat and asked the one thing he was desperate for: “Can we see him?”

Dr. Schneider considered the five of them. “Not all at once,” he answered. “Only two visitors at a time for intensive care patients. And he may be groggy for a few hours.” He checked his watch. “I recommend you keep the visit short. The unit doesn’t have limited visitation hours, but rest is an important part of recovery.”

Bill scooped the stack of pages off the table and they filed out of the room and back to the waiting area. Bev went up to the window and asked the receptionist (a different one from this morning; they’d changed shifts without Richie even noticing) if it was okay to go in.

“Yes,” the receptionist confirmed. “Dr. Schneider spoke with you?”

“Yes, he did.”

The receptionist nodded and said, “Two at a time.”

Bev thanked her and stepped back from the window. “Okay, so who first?” She posed the question lightly but seemed ready to sprint into the ICU herself.

“I’ll go,” Bill said solemnly as Richie raised his hand.

Bill handed the sheaf of medical literature off to Bev, and he and Richie crossed through the ICU door together. There was a short stretch of hallway with a bathroom and a nurse’s station and a wall-mounted hand sanitizer dispenser, with a sign insisting visitors use it before entering the unit, then an open doorway into a curtain-segmented room. Eddie’s bed was visible from the doorway.

Richie froze for a moment at the sight of him. He was lying completely flat, and a fresh bandage was on his cheek. There was a tube crammed down his nose, secured with tape along his other cheek, plus an oxygen cannula poking into his nostrils. IVs inserted where his neck met his shoulder, as well as in his arm. The rack by the bed held various bags of fluids; one was blood, but Richie couldn’t identify the others. The rack was accompanied by multiple beeping, blinking machines.

“Fuck,” Richie muttered under his breath as he rubbed the mandatory hand sanitizer into his palms. He’d been lucky enough not to spend much time in hospitals. For him to finally have a hospital experience at forty, when it was Eddie, who had nearly died saving him… Just.  _ Fuck _ . He shot a glance at Bill and then hurried to pull up a plastic chair beside Eddie’s bed.

Eddie appeared only recently to have awoken. Blinking slowly, his gaze settled on Richie. “Richie…?” he asked in a croaky voice.

“Yeah, man,” Richie replied, scooting the chair closer to the side of the bed as a nurse edged around them to inspect the readouts on one of the machine screens. “I’m here.”

Eddie lifted his forearms and looked down at himself, craning his neck to take in the room. “This is like a nightmare,” he groaned weakly.

“Wait til you hear about all the titanium and shit they put in you,” Richie said, trying to smile. “You’ve gone bionic, buddy.”

“Yuh-yeah,” Bill stuttered from where he stood by Eddie’s head, his concern and exhaustion clear on his face. “They patched you up good.” 

“Myra,” Eddie said with a slurred kind of panic, eyes darting around the ICU. “Myra. Where is she?”

“He’s still coming out of anesthesia?” Richie asked the nurse.

She answered with a slightly apologetic nod.

“Dude, your wife’s not here,” Richie said, trying to hold eye contact with Eddie. “You’re in Derry, Maine.” Eddie seemed to understand this news, so Richie continued, “And Bill’s here. We’re all here. Bev and Ben and Mike are all waiting outside. They only let two of us in at a time.”

“What...what happened?” Eddie asked foggily.

“We’ll, uh, we’ll tell you later,” Richie assured him, looking over at Bill, who cast the nurse a sidelong glance. Discussion of what had happened beneath the sewers required more privacy than the ICU allowed.

Richie extended a hand, meaning to lay a reassuring palm...somewhere. But he realized that he didn’t know what was safe to touch and instead curled his fingers around the bed rail. “How are you feeling?”

The question seemed to demand a lot of concentration for him to answer. Finally, he replied, sounding very nervous, “I can’t feel my legs.”

“Yeah,” Richie said, the disoriented anxiety in Eddie’s eyes making his heart sink. “The doctors are probably gonna talk to you about that tonight.”

“Tonight,” Eddie repeated.

“Yeah, dude. You’ve been in surgery all fucking day.”

“Oh,” Eddie replied in a small, thoughtful voice. He looked at Bill. “Bill,” he stated.

“Yeah,” Bill choked out.

“You’re both okay,” Eddie observed fuzzily.

Bill’s bloodshot eyes were shining. Richie shot him a stern look that he hoped communicated the sentiment  _ Don’t start crying here, man. Don’t fucking do it _ . 

“Why don’t we go get the others,” Richie suggested. “We’re not supposed to stay long,” he added for Eddie’s benefit.

“Okay,” Eddie said with a hum, letting his eyes drift shut.

Bill rested a hesitant hand on Eddie’s arm for a moment. Eddie hummed again. Richie gave one of Eddie’s non-monitored fingers a light squeeze and rose from his chair.

“You’re going?” Eddie asked dreamily, eyes opening once more.

“Yep.”

“Tuh-to get Mikey and everyone else,” Bill elaborated.

“Good,” Eddie said with sleepy approval.

Bill was displaying both discomfort staying and reluctance to leave, lingering a half-step away from the bed with a devastated and desperate expression on his face. Richie ushered him back into the waiting room.

“Next up?” Richie asked, holding the door open.

“You go,” Beverly said, waving Mike and Ben in. Once they’d passed through the door, she turned to Richie and Bill. “How is he?”

“Fucked up on anesthesia,” Richie answered.

When Bill didn’t answer, Bev asked, “Did he look bad, or…?”

“He—” Bill started, but he got stuck on his stutter.

“He’s hooked up to a bunch of stuff,” Richie said when Bill couldn’t get a sentence out. “But…” He shrugged. He didn’t know what most of the stuff was. It could be normal. Or it could be dismal.

Beverly shuffled the papers Bill had handed off to her as if she were seeking words of reassurance embedded in the surgical and diagnostic information.

Ben and Mike ducked out a couple minutes later.

“My turn?” Beverly asked breathlessly, rushing into the ICU before the door had even closed all the way. Richie followed her as she hurried over to Eddie’s bed and planted a kiss on his unbandaged cheek. “Oh,  _ Eds _ .” She didn’t bother pulling up a chair but rather half-crouched by the head of the bed as she placed a gentle hand on Eddie’s shoulder. “How’re you doing, honey?”

“Hi,” he said, sluggishly moving his own hand to place it over hers. Then he frowned and raised his hand to finger the edge of Beverly’s sleeve. “What the hell are you guys wearing?”

“Hospital clothes!” she answered amicably. “The stuff we wore here was too dirty and they wouldn’t let us keep it.”

“Huh.” Eddie seemed to be trying to compute why their clothes had been dirty, but the trauma- and anesthesia-induced block on his memory and reasoning skills brought him up short.

“You doing okay?” Bev asked. “The doctor told us not to stay long but we all wanted to see you.”

“Thanks,” Eddie said, smiling a little. He gazed up at Bev, then looked over at Richie. “You wanted to see me twice?” he giggled.

“And that’s the anesthesia,” Richie muttered. “I just followed Bev back in here, dumbass,” he said more loudly so Eddie would hear. “Everyone else is going to see you again tomorrow. Okay?”

Eddie’s face suddenly became very serious. “Richie,” he said firmly.

Richie was too sore to crouch the way Bev was, but he pulled one of the chairs in close. “What? What’s up, buddy?” He felt a pang of terrible familiarity as the words rolled off his tongue.

“I just…” Eddie frowned and looked to the ceiling. “I feel like there was something I needed to tell you,” he mused.

“Yeah? Was it that you fucked my mom?”

“Mm, no,” Eddie replied, still gazing thoughtfully upward.

The nurse was stepping around them again, checking all Eddie’s tubes and readouts.

“I think we really do need to go, Eds,” Bev said gently. “We’ll come back in the morning.”

“That sounds good,” Eddie approved, eyes roaming from the nurse, to Beverly, to Richie. “That sounds good,” he repeated, staring at Richie but not as though he was really seeing him.

“See ya, dude,” Richie said, feeling slightly unnerved. Eddie smiled a faint, distracted smile, and Richie and Bev departed.

Mike and Bill and Ben were hovering just inside the waiting room.

“He seems like he’s gonna be okay,” Ben said to them, his tone one of relief. “He was, like, talking to all of us. That has to be good. Right?”

“I guess,” Richie supposed.

“Shouldn’t we stuh-stay, though?” Bill asked. “I-I could stay longer, if you all want to head back.”

“Bill, I think we’ve done everything we can for today,” Beverly said. “Or I...all of us would stay.” She glanced over at Richie. “This weekend’s been such a shitshow. We need to take care of ourselves, and then we can come back.”

Bill appeared unconvinced.

“She’s right, man,” Richie admitted reluctantly. “I’d fucking stay, but we’re just in the way in there.” He jerked a thumb toward the ICU. But he was trying to buy into it himself as much as he was trying to persuade Bill. What if Eddie remembered whatever it was he wanted to say to him?

_ No, that doesn’t matter right now, you stupid idiot. The dude’s legs don’t work and he was in surgery for like twelve fucking hours. You shouldn’t be worried about whether he tells you jack shit. _

“Let’s all head back,” Mike said reasonably. “I’ll follow you back to the Town House. We can all talk more there.”

But Richie wasn’t interested in talking to any of them. When they got back to the Town House, he stalked up to his room, shut the door, and headed for the shower, stepping over a slip of paper topped with the word NOTICE on the way. He dumped his duffel bag and sewer clothes bag on the floor and showered as though in a trance. Everything was bright and blurred, the sound of the water seeming worlds away.

He wanted to go back. Sure, it didn’t matter if Eddie’s half-sedated brain was right that there was something he had to tell Richie. But what if it was? And what if there was more for him to remember? They’d all spent the weekend  _ remembering _ , but there had to still be so much left…

Or not. He didn’t know how memory worked. And they were all nearing middle age anyway. The human brain didn’t remember every moment of childhood very vividly by then. Too much other stuff had happened in the intervening years.

And what had Eddie been up to in all that time? He’d gotten married, continued his terror about sanitation and safety and wellness as his mother had taught him. But what else? What life was waiting for him when he finally left Derry?

At some point it occurred to Richie to check if Steve Covall had called.

He shut the water off and stood there, dripping, in the clawfoot tub and remembered that his phone had drowned in the cistern and sustained enough blunt impact damage that it was screwed even without all the water getting in it.

Well, that was as good an excuse as any to put off dealing with Steve until later.

He toweled off and pulled on the clothes he’d brought to sleep in, fully intending to lie awake until the building was dead quiet and then creep downstairs to the bar. But before he could enact this plan, there was a knock at the door of his room.

It was Beverly. She hadn’t changed out of the hospital scrubs yet.

“We’re going out for food,” she said. “Do you want us to bring you back anything?”

“No,” he answered. He didn’t think he’d ever be hungry again for the rest of his life.

“Richie…”

“I said I don't want anything.” He turned away from her and snatched the NOTICE off the floor. It was a message from management saying that there had been an incident on premises and that someone would be coming on Monday to replace the window in one of the rooms. Eddie’s. Richie tossed the page aside and set to turning down the bedcovers. Bev lingered briefly in the doorway, then left. He shut the door and locked it.

Less than half an hour later, there was another knock. He opened it to find Beverly again, this time holding a bag out to him.

“That was quick,” Richie remarked, not taking it.

“We got gas station sandwiches because it was fastest. Everyone else is in Bill’s room,” she said. Her eyes were wide, imploring. “If you want, you can come over to the room and eat with the rest of us.” She gave the bag a little shake.

He didn’t particularly want to go to Bill’s room and bask in Bill’s anxiety and guilt. He had enough of his own to cope with. But he had, in theory, known Bill longer than the others had. So maybe he needed to do this.

“Fine,” he grumbled, grabbing the bag from her and following her to Bill’s room.

Bill was slumped at the little writing desk by the window, head on his arms, his body shaking with sobs. Mike and Ben were standing by him with sympathetic hands on his shoulders.

Richie threw the sandwich bag onto the bed and dragged over an upholstered chair from the corner. “Out of the way, gorgeous,” he muttered, then shoved the chair into the spot where Ben had been standing.

Bill’s sobs shuddered to a pause. “Heh-hey, Rich,” he said shakily.

Richie slapped a hand onto Bill’s back, perhaps a little more roughly than he ought to have done, and left it there as he searched for something to say.

“Bill, it’s not your fault,” he said very simply, knowing full well that the words weren’t powerful enough to stop what Bill was feeling. “All the fucked-up shit that’s happened here...not your fault.”

Bill sniffed wetly and turned his head to look at Richie. “Not all,” he agreed. “Buh-but the...the kid. Th-the kid, and...and Eddie—”

Richie shook Bill very slightly. “Dude, no. None of it. Especially Eddie.” That was  _ his _ fucking fault.

“You guh-guys shouldn’t have guh-gone into the house with me,” Bill argued. “I should’ve—”

“Fuck that, Bill. How the fuck would you do Mike’s bogus ritual or kill Pennywise if we weren’t there? It had to be all of us.”

“He’s right, Bill,” Bev chimed in from where she stood beside Ben. “If what happened to Eddie is your fault...then it’s all of our faults, isn’t it? We all went down there together.”

“Or,” Ben started, hesitant. “It’s none of our faults. Because we all only did what we thought needed to be done.”

“I like the sound of that better,” Bev said, a tiny smile curving her lips.

“Yeah, except, I gotta be honest, I don’t think it really applies,” Richie countered, pulling away from Bill to gesture irritably with both hands. He would agree with anything that exonerated the others. He would try to kick Bill off the guilt train himself. But the idea that he, Richie Tozier, had acted according to what he  _ thought needed to be done _ the whole time down beneath the sewers...was laughable.

“Let’s not spend the night arguing about blame,” Mike said softly, rubbing Bill’s shoulder.

“I’m just saying—”

“We know what you’re saying,” Mike assured him.

They lapsed into silence. Eventually Bill sat up and wiped his face on his sleeve. He sighed heavily, staring down at his hands. “Woah.” He twisted around to show his left palm to the others. “Th-the scar’s gone.”

Richie looked down at his own hand. The skin was smooth, the recently reemerged scar now gone once more. “Nothing lasts forever,” he remarked dully.

“Some things do,” Ben replied. There was a little bit of a twinkle in Ben’s eye, as though he knew something that Richie didn’t. But before Richie could ask what the hell that was about, Ben turned away to grab Richie’s sandwich off the bed. “Here, Rich. You should try to eat.”

“Yeah,” Bev quipped. “Sandwiches definitely don’t last forever.”

“Yeah,” Richie agreed, shaking himself out of his funk for the moment and echoing Bev’s tone. “Especially ones you get at a gas station.” He took the sandwich from Ben and took a large bite. “That shit’ll go right through you,” he said around the mouthful of slightly soggy bread and preservative-laced meat. “Pun intended.”

As he swallowed it down, the conversation turned to inconsequential things. It had been an unbearably long day, for all of them. Arguments and questions could wait.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for keeping up with this story, folks! I love hearing from you in the comments and on Tumblr.<3
> 
> Beta'd by [Kat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/katinderry) ([strangergaten](https://strangergaten.tumblr.com/)) and [AJ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pushingcrazies/) ([darkwingdukat](https://darkwingdukat.tumblr.com/)).

**CHAPTER THREE**

Richie gave up on getting decent sleep around four in the morning. Whenever he got deep enough to start dreaming, shadowy terror shocked him awake with a dying shout on his lips. He couldn’t imagine the others faring much better. The not-quite-dreams didn’t take a clear shape, but Pennywise floated through them. There was darkness. There was light. There were claws. And teeth. And blood. So much blood. Eddie’s blood.

He switched the bedside lamp on and grabbed for his glasses, feeling sweat on his skin as he shoved them onto his face. Gross.

He threw back the sheets and duvet and went to the bathroom to run a washcloth under the faucet. As he swiped roughly at his face with the wet cloth, he registered the rumbling of shower spray from the floor above. He wondered, in an offhand way, who was in the room above his. Someone traveling for work in the area, or foolishly summering in a shithole town in Maine. Not necessarily one of the Losers. Pretty early to be up though.

Too early to raid the bar?

Yes, unless he was being stupid.

He sighed. The shower upstairs shut off.

So the next question: Was he being stupid?

Answer: Usually.

After a few moments’ consideration, he shoved his feet into his still-wet shoes without bothering with socks, then unlocked the door and wrenched it open—

And nearly crashed right into Beverly.

“Oh!” she gasped. “Hi. I was about to knock.”

She was wearing a fluffy, Town House issue robe, her legs bare and hightops on her feet. Her hair hung in damp, scraggly curls.

“I saw the light on under the door,” she said. “So I thought you might be awake. How did you sleep?”

“Like shit,” he replied, stepping back from the door. “You’re in the room above mine?”

“I think so, yeah.”

“I heard you in the shower,” Richie said around a yawn. “You wake up with night terror sweats too?”

“A little.” She followed him in, shut the door gently. “I think everyone else is still sleeping, but I was wondering… I don’t have any other clothes.” She brushed strands of wet hair out of her face and looked a little annoyed. “There’s a washer and dryer downstairs but no detergent. I lost my bag yesterday,” she explained. 

“Oh shit, right. Uhhh... Do you want sweatpants? I have these dumb sweatpants.” He pointed down at them. “They’re gonna be, like, super long on you but there’s a drawstring.”

“Good enough for me,” she said, sounding relieved. “Do you have a spare shirt, by any chance?”

He tugged at the white undershirt he was wearing. “It’s this or the, like, one other shirt I brought.” He went over to his duffel bag, then paused with his hand halfway in. “Eddie had two massive suitcases. I wonder if there’s anything good in there. He’s smaller than me. He brought those back up here, right?”

When Bev didn’t say anything, he turned back to her.

Her eyebrows had leapt about a mile high. “You want to break into his room?”

“You said it, not me.”

It was easy to do. Someone had been in to tape plastic sheeting over the bathroom window and neglected to lock up when they left.

“I feel weird about this,” Bev said, stepping around the bloodstained areas of carpet as Richie dragged the two bulky suitcases out into the center of the room.

“Ah, come on,” Richie said dismissively, plopping down on the floor and unzipping one case. “It’s not like we’re going through his—” He threw the top of the suitcase open to reveal a sea of pill bottles and blister packs and ointment tubes. “Medicine cabinet,” he finished awkwardly.

But Beverly wasn’t listening. Despite her reported weird feeling, she’d already started sifting through the contents of the other suitcase, which seemed to actually be clothes.

“Aw, Eds,” she said fondly as she set a pile aside. “Salmon is not your color.”

Richie left her to it, transfixed by the portable pharmacy before him. There was rubbing alcohol. Cotton swabs. Cotton balls. An entire box of tissues. Sterile gauze. Variously sized bandages. Pepto-Bismol. NSAIDs. Steroid cream. Melatonin supplements. Eyedrops. More NSAIDs. A shit-ton of vitamins. A nasal irrigation kit. Benadryl. Neosporin. Tums. Acne cream. Different acne cream. At least four different kinds of throat lozenges. Rolaids, in addition to the Tums. Nyquil. Dayquil.  _ Multi _ vitamins. Tylenol. Claritin. And Allegra. And Zyrtec.

“What the hell…?” Richie muttered, pawing through it all in disregard of common courtesy. “I bet he doesn’t even  _ have _ allergies.” His hand struck a box of Midol Complete. “And he  _ definitely  _ doesn’t have that.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Just...Eddie being Eddie.” He flipped the suitcase shut. “Find anything?”

“I think so,” she replied, sounding satisfied. She had what looked to be lilac silk pajama pants and a pink-orange polo shirt in her hand.

“You’re going with the salmon?”

She grinned. “It has a pocket!” And she shook the shirt out so he could see the stripe-embroidered breast pocket. “Isn’t that handy?”

“Sure,” Richie said, leaning back on his arms. “If you need to carry, like, a matchbook. Or a single credit card.”

“You have no appreciation for fashion,” she teased.

“Whatever. Put some clothes on, woman.”

And for a moment things felt like they were the way they were supposed to be. Amorphous boundaries and slightly nosy, caring friends. Sharing clothes and joking around.

But they weren’t, of course. Things were fucked up. Eddie wasn’t here to be in on it, so it didn’t really count.

Richie averted his eyes as Bev changed, and his gaze fell on Eddie’s one other piece of luggage. It was a smaller bag, not one that seemed likely to have clothes in it. A little toiletry tote bag.

He could claim he was being scrupulous about making sure the healthcare professionals received all relevant medical information no matter how dazed Eddie was by his morphine drip. Or he could admit he was hungry for pieces of information to fit into the puzzle of who the fuck Eddie was these days. Either way, the big pharmacy suitcase was the Second Fanny-Pack of this situation: the things Eddie couldn’t couldn’t possibly go through every single day but wanted to bring along anyway, just in case. Like his bifocals on sunny, outdoor days in summer.

The toiletry bag was the First Fanny-Pack.

Richie grabbed it off the top of the dresser and unzipped it. It contained the normal things one might expect to find in a person’s toiletry bag: their preferred hair and body washes from home; toothbrush and toothpaste and mouthwash; deodorant; chapstick, but a couple kinds because it was Eddie; a packed-full pillbox of vitamins to  _ actually _ take; and, tucked away in an inside pocket...two orange prescription bottles.

_ Here we go. _

The first one was something called Fluvoxamine Maleate. Luvox, it said underneath. Richie didn’t know what that was off the top of his head, but it seemed to be something new to Eddie. The date on the bottle was recent, and the instructions said  _ 1 tablet a day at bedtime for 5 days, then 2 tablets daily at bedtime _ .

The second was Alprazolam. Richie knew that one. Xanax.  _ Take 1 tablet by mouth up to 3 times daily as needed. _

“Do you think we should take these?” Richie asked, holding both the Luvox and the Xanax out to Bev as she fiddled with the hems of the pajama pants.

She straightened and frowned at the bottles in Richie’s hand. “Take them?”

“To the hospital. Jesus.”

She inspected the labels as he’d just done. “I guess,” she said. “That one says to take it daily. And the doctors there should probably know exactly what he’s been taking.”

“Yeah. Okay.” He gave the bottles, and himself, a little shake and nodded toward the door. “You wanna head there now? I just need to change and get my stuff.”

“Meet you downstairs?” Bev said. “I’ll check if anyone else’s lights are on.”

They pushed the suitcases to their approximate starting positions, then parted ways as Bev hurried down the hall and Richie returned to his own room. He changed into a hoodie and jeans, put on socks before stuffing his feet back into his shoes, and dug his wallet out of his bag of rank sewer clothes. Then, after some hesitation, he also dug out Eddie’s phone. Cramming it all into pockets, he grabbed his keys and returned downstairs.

Bev was already waiting by the front doors. She shrugged toward the stairs with a look that said none of the others were awake. Ben’s laptop bag was slung over her shoulder.

“How’d you get that?” Richie asked, nodding to it as they pulled open the front doors and headed for the car.

“Oh, I asked if I could look up some of the stuff the doctor was talking about yesterday, and he told me I could take it for as long as I needed it. I thought that was sweet of him. He seemed to have a lot of stuff he was trying to work on.”

“He’s sweet,” Richie responded absently, debating whether to ask if she’d noticed any suspicious twinkling about the look Ben had given him last night.

“Yeah. He is,” she replied warmly, and Richie decided not to say anything. Ben’s weird twinkling last night was probably just about Bev.

“What happened to your bag, anyway?” he asked instead as they pulled out of the parking lot. “You said you lost it. Where the hell’d you lose it?”

“Oh! I...I went back to the old apartment where I used to live with my father. There was an old woman living there now, and she invited me in. And then she turned into a giant monster lady and chased me out.”

“Well, that’s fun. And you ran out without your bag?”

“Yeah, I left it in the sitting room.”

“Wanna go back and get it?” Richie suggested, bringing the car to a stop instead of taking the turn toward the hospital.

“I don’t know…”

“Unless you think it wouldn't be there or something.” He glanced over at her. “I’m just thinking of notable fashion designer Bev Marsh being caught in public wearing a saggy polo shirt and silk pajamas.”

“I think they’re rayon, actually.”

“That means nothing to me.”

Beverly sighed. “Okay, let’s go.”

When they pulled up outside the building, the first thing Richie noticed was how completely derelict it looked.

“Was it like this yesterday?” he asked, frowning.

“Part of the time,” Bev answered.

“Huh.” He fumbled in the center console for his non-rental keys, which had a bottle opener slash LED flashlight clipped to the chain. “At least with the clown dead the worst that’ll happen is we go crashing through the rotting floorboards and suffer moderate to severe injuries.”

“At least.”

They clambered up the fire escape in the bluish light of early morning. Beverly jiggled the doorknob of apartment five. With a little shove, the door swung open.

Richie’d never actually been inside the apartment when Bev lived here. But he doubted it had looked anything like this. Dilapidated, broken furniture lay about among miscellaneous debris of past squatters. It smelled moldy and sinister. He twitched the flashlight’s beam along the floor, but there didn’t seem to be any gaping holes to fall through.

Beverly took light, long strides to a beat-up chair and snatched her backpack from atop it before stepping carefully back to Richie. “That was easy,” she said, sounding relieved. “I don’t think I would’ve come back by myself.”

When they got back to the car, the sun was just starting to peek over the horizon. Richie started the engine and glanced over at Bev, who was shedding Eddie’s clothes and rapidly replacing them with her own.

“Now I’m thinking of notable fashion designer Bev Marsh being caught in public wearing absolutely nothing.”

“Oh, be quiet. Nobody out here knows me anymore,” she said, shimmying into leggings. “And the inside of your car isn’t public anyway.”

Richie grinned as he turned back onto the route toward the hospital. “I missed you,” he said fondly.

“No, you didn’t,” she laughed.

“Nah, you’re right,” he conceded. “But if I’d remembered you, I would’ve missed you.”

“You too,” she said, and he could hear the smile in her voice. The smile seemed to hang in the silence between them for the rest of the short drive to the hospital. Things felt...almost okay.

Once they arrived, it took them a few minutes to get their bearings and find their way back to the ICU waiting area. And things felt a hell of a lot less okay once they were there.

“Eddie Kaspbrak?” Bev murmured at the window, and the receptionist waved them along.

But Eddie was asleep. All his tubes looked pretty much the same, except the blood one was gone. He must’ve finished his transfusions last night.

“Let’s check back in a little bit,” Bev suggested quietly. “I don’t want him to feel like we’ve been staring at him the whole time he’s been asleep.”

“Sure. Yeah. Whatever.” Richie followed her back out into the waiting room, where he sprawled across several seats and sighed up at the ceiling. He hadn’t slept enough last night, but he probably wasn’t going to be able to sleep here.

There was the sound of a zipper and a ruffling of pages as Beverly took out Ben’s tablet and the packet of information the surgeon had handed over. As Richie listened to the faint tapping of her fingertips against the screen, the anxiety of the day before started to reignite. Eddie was, as Richie had seen with his own eyes, more or less in one piece. Which should feel like a fucking miracle. But in the setting of this waiting room, it felt like some kind of terrible limbo. He was injured, badly. And only time would tell how much he would recover. Richie didn’t understand too much of what the surgeon had said yesterday, but it had sounded like a lot. And no matter what the prognosis, inside the hospital the situation felt hopelessly out of their control. Back at the Town House, the idea  _ Eddie is in the hospital _ felt cleaner somehow. Not good, but...safe. They had done all they could do. They had gotten him to the actual medical professionals.

But here, in this place of horrible waiting, it was easy to remember that this was a building where people  _ died _ . People died here  _ all the time _ . Because that was just the nature of hospitals.

He tried to shove his hands in his pockets but encountered Eddie’s meds and phone. He wrenched them out and dropped them onto the floor. After a few moments he was dimly aware of Bev taking them and tucking them into her bag, but he didn’t meet her eyes.

Some time passed. Maybe half an hour. Then Bev seemed to decide the silence needed to be broken.

“Do you want to read about any of this stuff?” she asked.

“What stuff?”

“All the medical stuff. I...I read everything the doctor gave us. And I’ve been trying to figure out what it all means. For him, I mean.”

Richie looked over at her. She had the paperwork in her lap, the tablet in her hand.

“They probably put a catheter in yesterday,” she said, scrolling through the webpage. “And based on this, that’s probably going to be a permanent thing.”

“A permanent catheter?”

“Well, no, they get replaced. Or you can use one a few separate times every day. If his lower body has no voluntary function he’s going to need one. There are different kinds though.” She made to hand the tablet over to him, but he grimaced and shook his head.

“Jesus fuck, we only just remembered being kids together like two days ago and now we’re considering Eds’s catheter options.” He shoved his glasses up his forehead and threw a forearm over his eyes. “I mean, what the fuck is this? Why?”

“You make it sound like he’s suddenly an old man,” Bev said disapprovingly. “He’s just hurt. Plenty of people have to deal with this shit,” she added, waving her hand at the screen.

“Yeah, but not Eddie,” Richie protested. “He only has fake medical problems.”

Bev shrugged. “Not anymore.”

He lowered his arm and squinted over at her. “You’re really very calm about this,” he accused. She should be panicking.

Or should  _ he _ be calm?

“Rich,” she replied seriously. “It was either this or him dying. I prefer this, and I think you do too.”

No. Those weren’t the only options in this chain of events. But even if they were...

“Isn’t that selfish or something?” Richie asked, feeling tears sting his eyes.  _ This is like a nightmare _ , Eddie had said last night.

“Not if he still likes existing at the same time as a schlub like you,” Bev said. “Which I would bet you at least a hundred dollars he does.”

“Thanks.”

“Of course.”

Of course. Richie scrubbed the heels of his hands against his eyes and slid his glasses back into place. Of course. Bill couldn’t break down in the ICU, and Richie couldn’t break down in the waiting room. 

After a while, Bev tucked Ben’s tablet back inside the bag, along with the bundle of papers. “Wanna go see if he’s awake?”

He was.

“Hi, Eds,” Beverly greeted, kissing his cheek again. “How are you feeling?”

“Legless,” he answered flatly.

“Well, that’s cool,” Richie said as heartily as he could, pulling chairs up for himself and Bev. “Not a lot of people get to say that, you know.”

Eddie did not appear especially cheered by this comment. Richie supposed he wouldn’t be either.

“Dude, it’s okay. You’re okay. Don’t worry about your legs,” he tried instead, clinging to what Bev had just said to him in the waiting room.

They were existing together, now, in this ICU. With or without the functionality of Eddie’s legs.

“Bev’s been reading up on all the shit they did yesterday,” he said, just to say  _ something _ .

“Huh?”

“Like, the surgery. Did someone talk to you yet? Because one of the surgeons talked to all of us.”

Eddie frowned. “That’s a HIPAA violation,” he groused. “I could sue over that.”

“Dude, don’t fucking sue. Everyone was afraid you were gonna die.” As he said the words, he felt a lump in his throat. They had been, hadn’t they?  _ Afraid. _

They were all quiet for a moment. Existing. Eddie fiddled with the edge of his bedsheet, not meeting Richie or Bev’s eyes.

“How...how did you guys...how did we get out of there?” he asked softly.

“Ben,” Bev answered, shooting Richie a glance. “Ben carried you.”

“He did?” Eddie seemed to perk up slightly with surprise and interest.

“Yeah, and it’s too bad you were unconscious for it. Muscles were rippling. It was all very sexy.”

“Beep beep, Richie.”

“Bev’s just getting territorial now because Ben was totally giving her puppy eyes yesterday while we were waiting to find out if you were gonna kick it or not— _ Hey _ .” But he was grinning. Both Eddie and Beverly had swatted at him, shaking their heads.

“So is anyone else here?” Eddie asked, wincing slightly as he stilled his head on the pillow.

“Like who, your wife?”

“What?”

“When you woke up after surgery you were asking for your wife. But you seemed pretty freaked out, man.” Richie thought of Eddie’s phone, now stashed in Bev’s bag. “We can give you your phone if you wanna call her I guess,” he added reluctantly.

“How long was I out?” Eddie asked, frowning.

“After surgery? Not too long. We all came to talk to you right after you woke up. But it’s Monday now.”

“Monday. Like, the day after the day after the night we went into the Neibolt house?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh. No, I don’t have to call her yet.” He glanced away. “Maybe later.”

Richie frowned, found himself asking, more curious than accusing, “Are you trying to start a fight with your wife?”

“What?”

“I… Nothing.”

“Do you need to call your work?” Bev asked hurriedly. “Or we could call for you, if that’d be okay.”

“No, no,” Eddie dismissed. “I work from my home office a lot. They won’t miss me until later in the week.”

_ And your wife won’t either? _ Richie wanted to say. But he managed to keep his trap shut for once.

Eddie was avoiding eye contact, looking uneasy. 

“So,” Richie said as one of the omnipresent nurses checked the monitors. “What is all this shit you’re hooked up to, anyway?”

“Oh, um.” Eddie raised a hand, sounding almost bored. “Pulse oximeter. And…” He raised his other hand, indicating the IV in his arm. “Morphine.” He pointed to the one in his neck. “Fluids and nutrients and shit.” He pointed to the tube in his nose. “That goes into my stomach. They can pump stuff out or in. It’s not hooked up to anything now though.” He unhitched the tail of the tube from behind his ear and flapped it around. It ended in some kind of brightly-colored connecting piece. Eddie looped it back over his ear and prodded the oxygen cannula. “Oxygen.” He tugged at the front of his shirt. “There’s EKG shit stuck all over me, too,” he said resignedly. “And there’s the ileostomy, which is basically a hole with a bag over it.” He grimaced and rested a hand on his abdomen. “And that’s pretty much everything. There’s hemovacs too, but they’re gross.”

“Hemo-whats?”

“Drainage,” Beverly jumped in. “They drain fluid from the surgical site.”

“Oh.” Richie grimaced. “That is kinda gross.”

“But they’re small things, right?” Beverly asked. “They’re, like, these little containers that suction the fluid out through tubes,” she explained to Richie, who most certainly had not asked.

“Yeah, and I’m not showing them to you,” Eddie snapped. Then he softened. “Shit, Bev. You actually read up on all that stuff?”

Beverly pulled the medical literature out of the laptop bag and held it up. “I read all this and Googled some other things,” she said. “The information the doctor gave us is mostly pretty basic. But someone talked to you, right?”

“Yeah, but they didn’t give me all this.” Eddie took the papers from her and shuffled through them, frowning, before handing them back. “But that reminds me, they gave me my stuff. Like, my clothes and stuff.” He pointed to a cabinet in the corner. “I think it’s in there. It’s all cut up, I think, but could you guys take it?”

“That sounds wise,” the nurse chimed in as she stepped back from the EKG machine. “We don’t like to keep too many patient belongings here if we can help it.” She opened the cabinet and pulled out a bag like the ones Richie and Bev had used the day before. Inside were Eddie’s clothes and shoes and watch. And Richie’s bloodsoaked leather jacket.

“Thanks,” Richie said, taking it. The nurse went off to tend to another patient, and Richie awkwardly set the bag on the floor, not wanting to hold it in his lap.

“Is there anything you want us to get for you, Eds?” Beverly asked. “Do you need anything from your car, or from your room? Like, um...medications or anything?”

Oh, so she was going to try being tactful about it.

“No, I don’t think so,” Eddie said.

This grated, for some reason.

“Really?” Richie challenged. “No medications?”

“No.” But Eddie had a shifty, nervous look in his eyes.

Richie glanced at Bev, who shrugged nearly imperceptibly.

“Okay,” Richie relented. “I think we have to leave for a little bit, actually.” He didn’t care how abrupt this departure seemed; suddenly all he wanted was to get out of this room.

“Oh! Yes,” Beverly said, clearly trying to smooth things. “We’ll come back later, with the others. We just have to go run an errand.”

“An errand?” Eddie frowned slightly.

“Yeah,” Richie said, standing with the bag of Eddie’s clothes. “Detergent. Bev and I brought, like, one change of clothes.”

“Oh.” He still looked a little nervous. “Okay. I’ll...I’ll see you guys later then.”

“Yes, you will,” Bev assured him, giving his shoulder a squeeze.

“Bye, dude,” Richie said.

Eddie gave a little wave.

Bev slapped Richie’s arm as soon as they were in the hallway.

“I know,” Richie hissed. “I know, okay?”

Bev shook her head. “You are such a jerk, Richie.”

“Guilty as charged.”

Bev gave him a brief, withering look and marched over to the nurse’s station. Richie trailed after her.

“We have a couple of our friend’s medications,” Bev said in a low voice to the nurse at the desk. “Are we able to leave them here for him?”

The nurse inspected the two pill bottles and assured Bev and Richie that they would note both prescriptions on his file.

That dealt with for now—Eddie could either pretend nothing had happened or chew them out for going through his stuff when they got back—they left the building and returned to the car.

Richie opened the trunk and set the bag of cut-up clothes inside, then just stood there, staring down at it.

“What do you think, get overpriced detergent at the gas station and find something to eat before going back and seeing if we can salvage anyone’s dirty clothes?” Bev asked as she started to open the passenger door.

Richie felt a wave of something like dizziness pass over him as his eyes focused on the smears of blood and dirt on the inside of the bag. “Yeah, can we just...can we sit outside for a minute?” 

They sat together on the curb at the edge of the parking lot. After a minute or so, Beverly unzipped her bag and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

“Can I get one of those?” He indicated the box.

“You’re a smoker?” she asked, handing it to him.

“Sometimes.”

She took a drag, exhaled the smoke, and handed the lighter over. “You know, Tom tried to get me to quit. He…” She shook her head. “It never really stuck.”

“I have never tried to quit anything in my entire life,” Richie stated as he lit a cigarette.

“That can’t be true.”

“No, it is.” He brought the cigarette to his mouth. The smoke felt angry and raw as he sucked it in. “I’ve never quit anything on purpose. Have you?” He hardly knew what he was saying. But he didn’t want to think about the bag of clothes, covered in Eddie’s blood, that had been  _ cut off Eddie’s body _ for emergency surgery. Or about Eddie connected to tubes, with  _ hemovacs _ stuck in his  _ surgical sites _ , possibly avoiding his wife. So words came out.

Bev gave him a long, thoughtful look, then looked out into the street. Which wasn’t very helpful when he needed to keep talking.

“I know I said it earlier,” Richie began, tapping the ash off his cigarette. “But you do seem really calm about all this.”

“I am,” she said simply. “Because things could be so much worse. He could be hurt more badly, or he could’ve died. God, we all could’ve. We could’ve all had horrible, tormented deaths. But we didn’t. And he didn’t. And the six of us are still here.”

She pulled again, blew smoke into the warm summer morning. “But I’m also not very calm. I’m scared about what I’m going to do next in my life. I’m sad for Eddie because he’s probably going to be stuck here for weeks and weeks and weeks, and that just fucking sucks. And it’s nerve-racking to be in a hospital, even as a visitor, y’know?” She looked over at him and smiled wanly.

“So how are you so chill about it?”

“I just think…” She took another meditative drag on the cigarette. “I think if you can talk to people in a way that makes them feel confident, then you should. So why act scared and sad around Eddie when I could just talk like I’m happy and calm?” She took another drag. “Maybe I’m just a big faker,” she said, a little sadly.

“No, no, I think you’re definitely onto something,” Richie allowed. “You should’ve seen Bill with him yesterday. If he’s like that again today, I vote he loses all visiting privileges.”

“Bill is…” She fiddled with her tunic shirt and shrugged. “...Bill.”

“Profound.”

“Oh, you know what I mean,” she said, jabbing him with her elbow. “I think Bill wants to be able to do something,” she went on. “And the waiting was stressing him out. And you know he feels guilty.”

“This isn’t his fucking fault!” 

“Yes, I know that.” She dropped her cigarette to the pavement and ground her heel over it. “It’s not anyone’s fault,” she said emphatically. Then she leaned her elbows on her knees and asked, in a transparent attempt to change the subject, “So, what are you going to do once we all get out of here?”

Richie took one final drag on his cigarette before throwing it to the ground too. “I have no fucking idea.” After a pause he added, “Maybe drink an entire bottle of tequila?”

Bev pursed her lips but left it at that.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think one update per month will wind up being typical for this fic, buuuut here's an extra this time. Thanks for reading! I love hearing from you folks. <3
> 
> Beta'd by Kat and AJ, as usual. Formatting might be dodgy in a few places. Let me know if there's anything egregious!

**CHAPTER FOUR**

Tuesday afternoon found Richie in his rental car, parked by the Kissing Bridge.

He’d spent the greater part of the day going to the nearest Apple Store and back. It was a two hour drive each way, and nearly an hour spent there, all so he had a phone that worked.

It was time to call Steve Covall.

He answered on the first ring.

“Rich? What the hell is going on? You need to be in Reno in two days, and you have the interview with—”

“Cancel it.”

“What?”

“Cancel it. I’m not doing the interview. I’m not doing Reno.”

“You’re… Rich. You’re not _ doing _Reno?”

“No, I’m not. Cancel everything. I’m still in Maine and I don’t know how long I’m gonna be here.”

There was an uncomfortable silence. Then Steve said, “You expect me to be able to cancel both of these shows on such short notice without press blowing up?”

“And the interview. I’m not doing the interview.”

“_Rich_.”

“_Steve _. You get paid to manage shit, right? So...manage it.”

Steve exhaled loudly. “You’ll have to eat the cost on this one, Rich. If it was earlier we could negotiate with the venue to reschedule, but—”

“So I’ll eat it,” Richie cut in. “I’m not trying to reschedule anything right now.” He ran a hand through his hair. His business account was about to take a serious hit, but there was no way around it. He wasn’t leaving Derry yet.

And he almost let a manic laugh slip from his mouth at that thought.

God, if only he and Eddie _ had _ left Friday night.

“Rich? Are you...good?”

“What? Oh, uh, yeah. I just. Yeah, can you just cancel everything I have coming up right now? This week, next week, next _ month _, everything.”

“If that’s really what you want to do, yeah.” Steve’s voice had become gentler, the way it sometimes did at times when Richie didn’t expect it. There had been moments in the past that this gentleness had given him curious, delighted goosebumps.

Not this time, though. Maybe because Richie wasn’t buzzed on after-show drinks.

“Did something happen?” Steve asked.

A weird cough of a laugh got out at that.

_ Sure, Steve, something happened. I suddenly remembered my childhood, learned one of my closest friends in life no longer exists, and watched another get gutted by a sewer clown. Just the usual stuff that might throw a wrench in the schedule of Trashmouth Tozier. _

“Rich?”

“Uh, yeah. Something happened. A...friend...family. Family. Family friend. In the hospital. There was an...an accident. And I’d like to stay out here for now, until I know what’s...happening.”

_ So, what are you going to do once we all get out of here? _

“A family friend? But who is it?” Steve sounded genuinely puzzled. Which was fair. This wasn’t the smoothest cover story Richie had ever told, even if parts were based in reality.

“Someone I had not seen in a very long time,” Richie said carefully, trying to sound calm and truthful. But he felt nuts. He fumbled in the center console, pulled out his pocket knife, and flipped it open. Then closed. Then open. Then closed.

“Do you need anything, Rich?” Steve asked softy. What a question.

Richie considered. “I gave you a key to my apartment, right?” It had been a while ago, as a preventative measure against the hungover missing of flights. Steve could come haul Richie out of bed without having to knock the door down. Not that that had ever technically been an issue. Except for maybe once. Or twice.

“Yes, I do have one.”

“Do you think you could ship some of my shit out here? Clothes and stuff. I only packed for a weekend.”

“Uh… I don’t see why not, sure. What was the name of the hotel you’re at?”

“No, don’t send it there,” Richie said sharply. He didn’t need to discover he had stalkers working for the postal service. “Send it to… Uh. Can you send it to Mike Hanlon at the Derry Public Library? Like, don’t even put my name on it.”

“Mike Hanlon?” Steve repeated, sounding puzzled once more, and maybe—just _ maybe _—a little hurt. “But who’s Mike Hanlon? At the library?”

“Yes. He’s a friend. That’s H-a-n-l-o-n. Got that?”

“I do, but don’t you—?”

If Steve finished the question, Richie didn’t hear it. His phone had buzzed abruptly and he, not expecting any incoming communication, had nearly dropped it.

_ So did you get a new phone _   
_ yet asshole _

“Thanks, Steve,” Richie blurted, and hung up.

He stared down at his phone.

It had to be from Eddie. He’d given his number to Eddie Friday night, though he hadn’t backed Eddie’s up properly for it to be transferred to his new phone’s contacts.

He typed _ Yep_, then tapped the backspace key three times and stared out the window, knife open in his hand.

He’d driven to this particular spot half-thinking he’d try to find the old, weathered place where he’d once carved their initials. Even after avoiding it the whole weekend, something about being newly equipped with a functional iPhone had made him want to snap a photo of it.

He flicked the blade shut and put it back in the center console so he could type with both thumbs.

_ Bev gave you yours? _

_ Yes _

_ She and Ben left for lunch _   
_ an hr ago. Bill is here _

Richie had not yet spoken to Bill one-on-one. All of the Losers had spent most of their time either visiting Eddie or staying holed up in their own rooms back at the Town House, privately grieving what Derry’s curse had taken from them. Happy memories. Bad ones. Stan.

Bill had fared okay alongside the others, but Richie suspected his ability to keep up the string of entertaining anecdotes from movie sets might falter somewhat when he had to face Eddie’s corner of the ICU alone.

He sighed, left Eddie’s text unresponded, and started the car. He could take the stupid picture another time.

Bill was in the waiting room, laptop on his knees.

“What’s going on?” Richie asked. “Is he asleep?”

“No,” Bill said. “They ha-had to empty the hemovacs though.”

“Ah, right.” They did that a few times a day. Richie had ducked out for it once the previous evening. There was only so much room by Eddie’s bed...and the sight of bloody red fluid getting poured into a graduated cylinder made his stomach lurch.

Richie sat across from Bill. He’d been by for a couple brief bedside sittings in the morning before leaving for the mall in South Portland. But that had been hours ago. And apparently Bev had handed over Eddie’s phone in Richie’s absence. Had she gotten him to call his wife? His boss? Had Eddie said anything to Bev about them having brought his pills in (because he hadn’t said a word about it yesterday)?

But Bill wouldn’t have the answers to these questions. So instead Richie asked, “How is everything here?”

“It’s…” Bill swallowed, shut his laptop. “It’s not so bad,” he said.

“Not so bad?”

“It could be wuh-worse.”

Richie scrutinized him. He still looked rough around the edges, though not as rough as he had on Sunday. “Did you talk to him?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Bill replied with a tired half-laugh. “I’ve been here for an hour.”

“You were in there for an hour?” Usually the nurses made them feel incredibly inconvenient long before that and they cleared out of the ICU for a while.

“Longer,” Bill supposed. “I was in there before Beverly and Ben left.” He slipped his laptop into the knapsack at his feet.

“Geez, did you sign books for the nurses or something?”

“Muh-maybe,” Bill said as he did up the buckles on the bag.

“Smooth.”

“Yeah.”

“I read one of your books, you know. The one that was really big a couple years ago?”

Bill grinned. “Shit, that one’s the worst.”

“Tell me about it.”

Bill chortled and shook his head. Then the smile faded from his face. “I’m suh-sorry.”

“About the shitty ending?”

“Nuh-_ no _. About...” Bill gesticulated frustratedly, looking rougher by the second.

“Hey hey hey,” Richie rushed. “No. Bill. Stop. Why are you apologizing to me?” He leaned forward, closing some of the space between them. “Listen, okay? You didn’t do any of this shit. A fucking maniacal razor-toothed clown did it. All of it.” He grimaced and added, “And Eddie’s situation is still more my fault than yours.”

“I told you all not to come with me.”

“And I told you Sunday night that’s some of the stupidest shit I’ve ever heard.”

“But—”

“Bill, did you make Eddie listen to all this bullshit for the past hour? Because if you did you should be under Town House arrest. Jesus Christ.”

“Nuh-no, I didn’t—”

“_Good_,” Richie said definitively, leaning back into his seat.

“Rich…”

“What?”

“How is this your fault if it’s not mine?”

Richie sighed. “Oh, Bill. You beautiful, oblivious man.”

Bill watched him, face twisted in misery, one brow raised expectantly.

“You didn’t throw a rock, you didn’t antagonize the clown, you didn’t get caught in the deadlights, you didn’t get snapped out of it by Eddie who got skewered when his back was turned to check that you didn’t split your stupid head open on the rocks or get your brain liquified.”

There was a moment of silence.

“I shouted at him,” Bill said glumly.

“Huh?”

“In the… Up in the house. With…” Bill shuddered. “...that fucking _ head_.”

“Oh. Right.” Eddie hadn’t stepped up to save Richie then. Bill had shouted him down. And then when he did step up to save Richie...he almost died. But: “I gave him a heartfelt speech after that, though. You missed it.”

“Speech?” Bill repeated doubtfully.

“Yeah, about how brave he is.” Richie crammed his hands into his hoodie pockets. “So… My fault.”

The two of them were quiet again for a few moments.

“Do you think Ben was ruh-right?” Bill asked softly.

“About what? Deciding to get abs?”

“About it not being any of our faults.”

“Was I _ not _ just saying that to you, like, thirty seconds ago?”

“Yeah but...do you actually believe that?” Bill asked. “Because you also just said…”

“I know what I said,” Richie interrupted. “I...I don’t know. Maybe.” Bev had said it to him again yesterday. _ It’s not anyone’s fault_. But it seemed like something that had to be _ someone’s _fault. So why not his? He’d been closest to Eddie when it happened. He could’ve done something.

But _ could _ he have, really? (This was where he kept going back and forth like...like Pong. Fuck Pong. Fuck the whole arcade.) Bill had said the kid from the restaurant had been killed right before his eyes. And the others all agreed he couldn’t have done anything.

So the logic of guilt was faulty. Richie supposed he knew this. But it didn’t take the tangled weight of assumed culpability out from between his ribs.

“Okay,” he said. “So maybe we’re both being assholes here.”

Bill nodded once.

“So do we tell him we feel like shit about what happened to him?” Richie asked uncertainly.

Bill seemed at a loss and did not answer.

“Have you talked to Bev?” Richie asked.

Bill appeared somewhat self-conscious now. “Wuh-why?”

“She’s, like, incredibly zen about all this.”

“Oh. Yeah. She is.”

Richie bounced his knee. “I think she likes Ben.”

Bill just looked at him.

“And you’re both married anyway, you lunatics.”

Bill looked away. “How was the mall?”

“It was the fucking mall, man. You should’ve come. It doesn’t make sense for you to drive out there, too.”

Bill pulled a chunky prepaid flip phone from his pocket.

“Ah, the frugal move. That’s fair.” Richie would have preferred that, but he needed a fancy bullshit phone because he hadn’t brought his laptop with him.

“Nah, I’m getting a-nuh-nother one mailed here. This is juh-just until then.”

Maybe Steve could ship his laptop. Richie made a mental note to ask him.

“So,” Richie said, glancing at the clock. “Whenabouts did they start setting up?” The hemovac draining only took a few minutes.

“Uh, twenty minutes ago?” Bill replied. “But they wanted to do some other stuff too.”

“Like what?” Richie asked with a pang. Had they realized they needed to perform some additional medical intervention?

“A...a bed bath? And they want to try moving him.”

“Wait, moving him? To where?”

“Just in bed, I thuh-think,” Bill answered. “Pressure sores.”

“Oh.” Richie relaxed. “That makes sense.” Then he asked, “Do you know if Eddie made any phone calls today?”

“Uh… I don’t think he did. Why?”

“I don’t think his wife knows he’s here,” Richie said. “Which is pretty fucked up.” He left it at that and settled into his seat. He felt very prickly about this Myra Kaspbrak. He didn’t think Eddie had an inkling, despite Richie’s irresistible slip during the extemporaneous speech to him in the sewers, but in the wee hours of Saturday morning Richie had Googled _ Edward Kaspbrak risk analyst _ and dug for puzzle pieces. There was a LinkedIn profile, a brief interview transcript on a business tech news website, a feature in his college’s alumni update, and a nuptial announcement from a decade ago. The announcement had a photo, Eddie smiling in a stiff sort of way beside the woman who was Myra. She was taller, broader, fatter than him, and something about her was uncomfortably reminiscent of the late Mrs. K (and shit did he feel like an ass about the joke Friday night when his searches eventually turned up that obituary).

“What about Audra?” Richie asked curiously. “Does Audra know you’re here? I still can’t fucking believe you’re married to Audra fucking Phillips, by the way.”

Bill smiled, but a little sadly. “She knows,” he said. “I tried to explain… She was pissed though. Wuh-well, she was already pissed…”

“Ah, so you’re on the rocks.” Richie nodded sagely. “If you don’t mind me saying, Big Bill, I don’t believe a fling with Beverly Rogan-Marsh would help that very much.” His brain drifted to Steve’s subtly sour reaction on the phone and he mused, “Or with Michael Hanlon.”

He hadn’t really _ meant _anything by it, was just throwing words into the air as soon as they materialized in his brain.

But Bill broke eye contact in a way that was _ most _ suspicious. “...Muh...Mikey?”

“Yeah, Muhmikey.” Richie surveyed Bill. This was...something. “You two are cute. And slightly touchy-feely.” It was something he’d noticed but largely written off; all the Losers were touchy-feely sometimes.

He leaned forward again and cleared his throat. “So, uh, am I actually reading this completely wrong, or do you like Mike or something, Bill?”

“Of course I like Mike,” Bill replied, somehow completely missing Richie’s meaning, or at least pretending to. “I like all of you.”

Richie felt a hysterical grin creep onto his face. “Oh my god, Bill. You _ do _.” Stuttering Bill Denbrough, unhappily married to one of the hottest ladies currently gracing screens and runways, was harboring romantic interest in his childhood friend, who happened to be a dude. Richie hadn’t slept well in days, he was caught in the sick limbo that was a waiting room in Derry, and he was crushed under angst and grief and resurgence of memory. It made Bill’s predicament funny. Funnier than Richie’s, anyway.

“But I haven’t missed anything, have I?” he asked, unable to stop himself. “Like, you two weren’t hooking up all weekend without any of us knowing, were you?”

“Beep beep, Trashmouth,” Bill said resignedly.

“That sure as hell wasn’t a no,” Richie snickered, fingers fidgeting in his pockets. But then it occurred to him that maybe Bill would be able to tell him something. But how to phrase it? Because it wasn’t really about Ben’s _ look _ , was it? It was about what the look _ meant_. Was Ben—and perhaps even everyone else—seeing something Richie wasn’t?

“Hey, forget it, Bill. But listen, do you have any idea—”

“Is one of you Richie?”

Richie twisted toward the attendant’s window, alarmed. “Yes?”

“A patient is asking for you.”

_ Shit_.

Richie leapt to his feet and rushed to the ICU door, dimly aware of Bill following close behind.

“You okay, dude?” Richie asked as he reached Eddie’s bed. He was lying flat still, but, based on what was visible above his waist, he was now on top of a layer of pillows.

“Fuck no,” Eddie grumbled. “They had to roll me and it hurt like a bitch.” He took an aggravated breath and said, “But hey, you’re back. How was the fucking mall?”

“Full of teenagers,” Richie answered as he dragged a chair across the floor. “Got the phone, though. So, mission accomplished.” He sat by Eddie’s shoulder, Bill mirroring him.

Eddie’s eyelashes looked damp, whether from the bed bath or from tears of pain, Richie did not know.

“So, did a sexy nurse give you a sponge bath?” Richie asked, perhaps too loudly.

Eddie appeared unamused. “No, two not at all sexy nurses rubbed my entire body with wet washcloths.”

“Hot.”

“You’re such a fucking dickwad, Tozier.”

“But my bedside manner is impeccable. Why else would you ask for me?”

“Ask for you?”

“Yeah, the dude at the desk out there said you asked for me.”

“Oh.” Eddie rolled his eyes. “I told one of the nurses to find out if you and Bill were out there. Don’t get a big head about it. Someone must’ve heard wrong.” He sighed and looked up at the ceiling. “It’s so fucking boring in here. I wish I could even _ eat_. I just lie here and do nothing all day.”

“Do you know when you’ll be able to yet, or…?”

He shook his head. “After IV, it’s this, though.” He indicated the nasal tube. “And as long as that goes okay, I guess I’ll finally be able to eat. Depends on whether I can actually digest things. Short bowel syndrome, you know.”

Eddie re-explained parts of the procedure, and the potential aftereffects thereof, multiple times a day. Richie thought it might be because the morphine clouded his memory. Eddie had always been eager to explain medical stuff at any opportunity when they were kids, though. Maybe some things hadn’t changed.

“Why the hell are you smiling at me like that?”

“You’re cute, Eds.”

Eddie glared.

“What? Only Bev gets to call you Eds these days? Do I have to mud-wrestle her for the privilege or something? How does this work?”

Eddie gave him a _ What the hell are you talking about? _ look. One of the ones where his lip curved slightly, like he actually thought Richie’s absurdity was funny but didn’t want Richie to know. But Richie saw right through it. He always had.

He felt a burst of warmth in his chest, as he did every time Eddie did something that seemed to reach back to their younger selves. Did Eddie feel it too? Did the others somehow know that he did? Was there a way Richie could be sure?

“I canceled my shit in Reno,” he blurted.

“Shit. Really?” Eddie asked, sounding surprised. (Richie had spent several minutes at the Jade of the Orient elaborating semi-drunkenly about his upcoming gigs and fall west coast tour.) “Because of me?” he added in a smaller voice.

The warmth in Richie’s chest fizzled out and his heart sank a little. “No, dude. Because of me. Because I want to be here.” Wow, sign Trashmouth Tozier up for the next hipster poetry open mic, quick. “We’re all staying. Right, Bill?”

“Yuh-yeah. I’m staying.”

“And so are Bev and Ben. And so’s Mike because he lives at the local library like a crazy hermit man.”

Eddie chewed his lip, face pinched.

“It’s fine, dude. All of it’s getting taken care of. I talked to my manager.” _ ...My manager who’ll do literally anything I ask him to because he’s totally been heartbreakingly infatuated with me for the entirety of my career but neither of us has ever said a word to acknowledge it. _ “Hey, Bev gave you your phone today. You finally decide to call your wife?”

“I filled out medical leave forms for work on Ben’s tablet this morning. They’re probably gonna try calling me.” He picked the phone up from where it was tucked among the sheets, glancing at the screen before putting it back down.

It was, Richie thought, an obvious dodge. But it didn’t sound like he’d called his wife. It sounded like he was still definitely avoiding her.

How long was that going to hold?

“What do you do at work?”

“Jesus, Bill. He already told us the other night. It’s so boring.”

But Eddie answered anyway. Richie didn’t interrupt this time, but he didn’t really follow most of it either. He listened, though. Eddie worked at a big insurance firm, in the risk management office. He analyzed data about insurance claims. Or possibly company spending. Or possibly both. Basically, he was good at whatever it was he did, which sounded like it involved complex spreadsheets.

“And there are, like, three other people there doing the same thing,” Eddie finally wound down. “They’ll be fine until I can come back.”

At the sound of soft, familiar voices approaching, they all looked toward the doorway. Ben and Bev were back, both very smiley.

“Hey,” Eddie said.

“Hi,” Ben replied. “We stopped by the library and ate with Mike. He’ll come here around six.”

Now there was the issue of cutting Eddie’s visitor count back down to two. If they weren’t quick about it, they’d get the hairy eyeball from one of the nurses. There was a bit of a shuffle as Bill vacated his seat, giving Eddie’s wrist a squeeze and then brushing a hand across Ben’s back as he edged around him and offered him the chair.

“Oh, sure,” Richie gibed, feeling his phone buzz in his pocket. “Start touching everyone to throw me off the scent.”

“What?” Eddie asked, frowning between them.

“Absolutely nothing,” Richie said. His phone buzzed again.

He spotted Bev giving him a sidelong look.

“Nothing,” he repeated, shrugging. He pulled his phone from his pocket. Steve.

_ Ok Rich, need to schedule _   
_ a conference call asap if we’re _   
_ canceling the whole tour._

_ Calling you in 5._

“Ah, fuck,” Richie muttered. But at least Steve was on top of all the logistical crap, as usual.

“What is it?” Eddie had turned his head slightly so he could look straight at Richie, his voice quiet.

“Manager. It’s fine. I’ll be back in a few.” He tried to flash a reassuring smile but felt like his face was jammed. So he turned away and took long strides, phone in his hand, until he was out of the ICU, then out of the waiting room, then eventually out of the building altogether. He sat on the curb a few yards from the door and held onto his phone expectantly, mind racing.

Bill and Audra were on the rocks. Eddie wasn’t talking to his wife. Bill might not be straight. And Eddie…

Eddie was planning to go back to work in New York. It didn’t even matter about his wife. Regardless of Myra, Eddie clearly had plans. Plans that had nothing to do with Richie, because why should they? All the Losers had their own lives now.

The insistent vibration of an incoming call marked the end of the five minutes.

“Hi, Rich,” Steve said in a businesslike tone as soon as Richie answered. “You said you wanted to cancel everything you have scheduled right now, so I ran some figures for you. This isn’t exact, just something to give you an idea. Thursday and Friday you’re supposed to be at the Laugh Factory, then that one-off at Pioneer Underground and the big show at the Pioneer Center itself. And that one will be more trouble to cancel, since it’s a fifteen hundred seat venue. I would _ recommend _ postponing for the bigger venues, or this is going to be a mess for you.” And he went on to list all the costs Richie was about to eat, the ones the non-appearance insurance would take care of, and the ones the management agency would cover. The totals were high. “Before I line something up with the execs and the PR department and everything, I’m asking you again: Are you _ sure _ you want to cancel all these? Some of the California tour dates aren’t even until November.”

November.

Eddie’s birthday was in November, wasn’t it?

This was heaps and heaps of money they were talking about. More money than he’d ever had to think of all at once.

And for what? Decades-old puppy love?

Richie licked his lips, pulse thudding in his ears. “Yep,” he forced out. “Every last fucking one.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Juuuust barely posting this one before the month is out! Beta'd by the usual. Thank you. I love you. Et cetera.
> 
> Content note: brief reference to domestic violence.

**CHAPTER FIVE** ****

The stitches were taken out of Eddie’s face Friday morning, leaving an angry pink indentation to continue healing on his left cheek. A member of the nursing staff offered to shave his stubble for him, but he waved her off, muttering that it didn’t matter but looking like the real issue was that he didn’t want people touching his face any more than they already had to. Then Richie and Beverly stood back from the bed as three nurses log-rolled him onto his side. It was clear that, even with his painkillers, Eddie found the process excruciating. He grimaced, breath hissing through his teeth, as the nurses positioned him and propped his body with pillows.

After the nurses departed for the time being, and after some improvised chatter manufactured to distract Eddie until the pain calmed back down, they lapsed into silence. Ben, with his tablet, was back at the Town House, leading some fancy architectural meeting through the magic of video conferencing. Bill was in the waiting room, chipping away at his next inexplicably bestselling novel. Mike was at work.

Beverly sipped tea from a paper cup as Richie leaned precariously far back in his chair, two of its legs breaking contact with the floor.

“So what’s that about?” Eddie asked out of the blue.

Richie, about to respond _ What’s what about?_, followed Eddie’s gaze to the marks on Bev’s forearm. They were yellowing around the edges now, though before they’d been dark and purple. Richie had noticed them, he supposed, but Bev’d always had bruises. And they’d all known where they were from, even if they’d never exactly talked about it.

Richie felt suddenly uncomfortable. Not just at the sight of the bruises and the direct attention Eddie was drawing to them, but at the idea that they hadn’t stood out to him because somehow, in his memory, they _ belonged _ there. But of course they didn’t. They didn’t _ belong _ there twenty-seven years ago, and they didn’t _ belong _ there now.

Richie shot a sidelong glance at Bev as the front legs of his chair clunked back to the floor.

“What’s what...?” She looked down at herself, then realized where his gaze was directed and became flustered. “It’s… I…” She faltered, rubbing her hand over the skin. “It’s nothing.”

“Bullshit, Bev,” Eddie replied quietly, without heat.

“It’s…” Her voice grew thick. “He... My... Tom. Tom did that,” she finally admitted, one shoulder shrugged up to her ear.

Eddie’s eyes swept what they could of the ward, checking for nurses who might’ve overheard, Richie knew, before settling back on Bev. “That sucks,” he said fervently.

“It does,” she agreed. She set her tea down on the little table beside Eddie’s bed. Gradually, her shoulders relaxed and she said, “I feel like I’ve lost so much time. So much of my life.” She reached one hand to place it over Eddie’s, and the other to rest on Richie’s knee. “But it doesn’t matter so much, now that I’m here with you. And the others. Everyone. So maybe it’s okay.”

“I hear you.” Eddie crept the fingertips of his other hand over Beverly’s, brow furrowed in thought. “That’s... It isn’t really okay, though,” he murmured solemnly. “But I do get what you mean.”

Richie felt gratefully disconnected from the particular understanding that passed between Eddie and Beverly in that moment. His parents, after all, had been mostly okay. Still were. And he’d never had an outrageously shitty partner, let alone married one.

_ You don’t know Myra Kaspbrak is outrageously shitty_, he tried to remind himself. _ You just like the idea of a divorce contingency plan. _ Divorcing a shitty partner seemed like a cleaner cut than divorcing a non-shitty one, after all. But that was all moot anyway.

The three of them remained silent for at least a full minute, Bev’s hands connecting them until a nurse came over to record Eddie’s vitals and inspect his IVs.

“Want me to go tag Bill in?” Richie asked once the nurse was done. Might as well put all the unhappily married folks in the same room.

“Okay,” Eddie answered.

Richie returned to the waiting room. “Your turn,” he announced to Bill. 

Bill shut his laptop and set it down on a chair, Richie nodding his agreement to babysit it while Bill visited Eddie.

It wasn’t for very long. Bill and Bev came out into the waiting room after being hairy-eyeballed out of the ICU about twenty minutes later, and the three of them stretched their legs and went outdoors, away from the smells of metal and nitrile and disinfectant.

This wing of the hospital had a little courtyard with a cement path, a few benches, and a sprinkling of rhododendron bushes arranged around a fountain. Richie sat on the edge of the fountain, even though the sign said not to, while Bill and Bev took a bench. They passed some time heckling Bill about the novel he was trying to write, then went back up to the ICU.

Ben came in the late morning, and then he and Bev disappeared together for lunch again. Mike came to the hospital during his lunch break, with strips of old Losers’ Club photobooth pictures to show around. By one forty-five, Eddie had been log-rolled onto his back, Mike had gone back to work, everyone else had returned from lunch, and Richie realized the time.

“Shit, I have to go,” he said to Eddie and Bill. “Big phone call with my manager and some agency execs so they can all tell me how bad I am for business.”

As he passed through the waiting room on the way out, he waved his phone in the air to indicate to Bev and Ben that he was off to lock himself in his car for his two o’clock professional beratement.

It started just about how he thought it would, though mercifully with fewer people. It was only Steve Covall and Robert Weatherly, who was one of the higher ups and was rarely in a good mood. He _ always _ called Richie _ Richard_.

“Richard,” he said somewhat condescendingly once Richie had reiterated his desire to cancel everything. “We need you to work with us here. We’ve put a lot of resources into booking and promoting these shows, and into getting you fresh material. Can you understand where we’re coming from?” A pause, and then he went on, “We haven’t even talked about Chicago last week…”

“And we don’t have to, do we?” Richie said as calmly as he could manage. “I got some...bad news on the phone. Tell me that hasn’t ever happened before.” He didn’t know how much Weatherly knew: just that he’d bombed the set, or that he’d puked off a balcony beforehand and had walked out on stage in a sweaty panic?

“Regardless, I’m sure you understand that it was very bad for press. Your first big local show in months, and you blow it like this? And now you want to add to the bad press by skipping Reno and rescheduling an entire tour?”

“I already told Steve: I’m not rescheduling anything right now. I can’t.”

“Richard,” Bob intoned. “We’ve made an investment in you, and in this tour.”

“Yes, yes, I realize that,” Richie rushed. It wasn’t like there was a way to make them understand _ exactly _ what had happened in the past week. And it wasn’t like he could kiss Weatherly’s ass, because he kind of hated him, especially right now. He didn’t want to promise him anything. Couldn’t, really. Not until he figured out what he wanted to do after Derry. “I don’t know how much Steve told you,” he said, running a hand through his hair and feeling sweat at the back of his neck. “Someone I... _ care about _...is in intensive care out here, and I’m not fucking leaving.”

“And we hear you, and we are sorry for what sounds like a difficult time,” Bob said blandly.

“Rich,” Steve piped up before Bob could get out another suffocatingly impersonal sentence. “Looking at rescheduling—”

“I’m not looking at rescheduling,” Richie snapped.

“Looking at rescheduling,” Steve started again. “...It would mean pushing everything off for about six months. Maybe even longer.” He paused, letting Richie consider that timeframe for a moment. “Do you think, around April of next year, you’d be ready for touring?”

Richie tried to answer. The thing was, time didn’t _ mean _anything right now. Everything was all jumbled. Richie lived by ICU days, not by calendar months. Not by years.

Twenty-seven years.

He was glad he hadn’t eaten much at lunch.

“I… Maybe. Yeah. Okay,” he replied, finally. He rubbed a palm roughly down his cheek. Where Eddie had stubble, Richie was developing proper scruff. He hadn’t bothered with shaving since before coming to Derry.

“Well, there you go,” Steve said, sounding extremely relieved. “So that’s the tour, at least.”

“And what about the Pioneer Center show?” Richie asked.

“We’ve postponed it,” Bob answered. “Which means we need to reschedule with the venue. You understand it would be costly to cancel outright.”

“Laugh Factory and Pioneer Underground ones are out, though, Rich,” Steve interjected. “So don’t worry about those.”

_ I wasn’t fucking worried about the fucking Laugh Factory and Pioneer Underground shows_, he would have liked to point out. But he just said “Great” and then let Bob talk, hoping it would expedite the end of the phone call.

“I think that’s everything we can settle for now,” Steve said diplomatically during Bob’s next pause. “We’ll get started on rescheduling and let you know if there’s anything we need from you, Rich.”

“Okay.”

“You...uh… You take care. Alright, Rich?”

“Yes, please do,” Bob concurred, though his tone was cut through with obvious disinterest.

“Sure. Bye.”

And with that, it was over, the worst of the professional interactions he’d have to endure for the time being. He gave himself a few minutes to wave away the stress of the phone call before getting out of the car and heading back into the hospital.

As he entered the waiting room, he spotted a large woman at the receptionist’s window, talking in a hushed but still discernibly displeased voice. He paused, doing a double-take as the woman flipped her chin-length blonde hair and her face was briefly visible head-on.

It was Myra Kaspbrak.

Her hair was different and her body more corpulent than had been captured in the nuptial announcement photograph. But it was undoubtedly her.

He succumbed to a moment of shock, his mouth slackening as the receptionist slid the window shut and Myra swept through the ICU door. When he unfroze, he rushed over to Bill’s chair.

“Bill,” he hissed, feeling light-headed. Maybe he should’ve eaten _ more _ at lunch. “_Bill_. Bill. Bill Bill Bill Bill Bill.”

Bill’s eyes widened in a way that communicated a sentiment along the lines of _Jesus, Richie, I heard you the first time, what the fuck do you want?_ Was there time to explain? She was _ in _ there.

The light-headedness had already passed, at least. Now a jittery anxiety had set in. “That was Eddie’s fucking _ wife_,” he finally managed to get out.

“Oh...shit,” Bill said, seeming a little lost but clearly picking up from Richie’s behavior that there might be something amiss.

Richie turned on his heel and half-ran into the ICU.

Myra was speaking to Bev and Ben, who both looked stunned. Eddie himself looked like a small animal ready to bolt. He couldn’t, of course. He was stuck lying flat in his hospital bed.

When Bev and Ben saw Richie, they slowly stood from their seats, glancing rapidly between Richie, Myra, Eddie, and each other.

“...my husband,” Myra was finishing saying.

Bev seemed bewildered, her brows and mouth twitching as she struggled to formulate an appropriate response.

“Of course,” Ben said kindly, though he looked similarly thrown.

“Myra, it’s okay,” Eddie said, his tone a shaky attempt at soothing, as a frowning Bill stepped into the ICU. “They’re my friends.”

“I think your _ friends _ should understand that I am your wife, and I have a right to be here,” Myra said insistently. “And now I would like them to leave so I can speak to you alone, please.” The addition of _ please _ did not do much to soften her words. She spoke coldly and commandingly, her manner powerful the way Sonia’s manner had been powerful. Furious. Manipulative. Intimidating.

“Myra, please,” Eddie said, shutting his eyes.

It was like they were kids again, and Sonia Kaspbrak was sequestering Eddie at home, restricting access to friends and outdoors and joyful things, shouting him down and making him small.

Yes, it was _ like _ that...only, they were all adults here.

“Hey,” Richie barked at Myra. “Back off, okay?”

Eddie’s eyes snapped open wide, staring at Richie as Myra rounded on him.

“Who do you think you are, talking to me like that?” she demanded. “This is my _ husband_. I don’t know what your involvement is in my Eddie’s injury, but I _ will _ get to the bottom of it and I _ will _ be speaking to a lawyer.”

“Myra, stop,” Eddie said, looking nervous. But his voice was quiet enough that Myra could pretend to ignore it.

Just then, a nurse came over.

“Hi,” she said with a customer service kind of politeness. “Only two visitors at a time, please.”

The Losers were all staring at Richie. He glared back at them in challenge. He wasn’t leaving, not unless—

“It’s okay, Richie,” Eddie said.

“I…”

Eddie looked miserable, but he also looked like he did want Richie to leave.

Richie raised his hands, palms out in surrender. “Okay,” he said, and left with the others, avoiding eye contact with Myra.

“What was that about?” Ben asked, eyes wide, once they were back in the waiting room. “You don’t know her at all, do you?”

“No, he doesn’t,” Beverly answered for Richie. She looked worried. “Let’s wait out here, give them some time.”

So they stayed in the waiting room, though it took a lot of coaxing from Bev to get Richie to stay put. He was ready to leap up and run to Eddie as soon as Myra stepped out.

But she didn’t step out, not until the evening. She fixed the Losers with a steely gaze and wordlessly passed into the hallway. Once she was out of sight, Richie all but sprinted through the ICU doors.

Eddie was asleep, his face clean-shaven.

The Losers left the hospital and met Mike at a diner for dinner. There was conversation, from which Richie largely abstained, about the election season news coverage and other non-Derry current events. Richie felt Bev’s eyes on him as he poked shreds of corned beef hash around his plate, but he didn’t meet her gaze.

Myra was at the Town House when they got back, frowning intently at her phone screen while absently eating from a takeout container in the lounge. Richie shoved his hands in his pockets and trudged up to his room, his plan of swiping booze from the unattended bar discarded.

Eddie’s things were in Richie’s room now. Richie wasn’t sure when that had been decided, but once Eddie’s reservation had been closed on account of him being in the hospital, his luggage had had to go _ somewhere_. So it went to the area of floor along the wall just inside Richie’s room. Richie hadn’t touched it, other than to filch some Benadryl when he wanted to knock out faster on Wednesday night. (It hadn’t helped at all with the terrible dreams, so he didn’t repeat the action on Thursday.)

Beside Eddie’s suitcases was one of the plastic hospital bags, now containing only Richie’s wrecked leather jacket. He should throw it away, really. Everything else, along with Eddie’s shoes, had been washed three times by Bev in sanitizing detergent down in the basement laundry room. Eddie’s cut-up clothes had been thrown out, his fancy watch wiped with rubbing alcohol per his request and set aside for potential warranty claim.

Tonight, he found an envelope on the floor next to the suitcases. It had been slipped under the door during the day, sealed side up. But before he could inspect it, he heard what he’d come to recognize as Bev’s footsteps in the hallway. He stuffed the envelope in his back pocket and opened the door before she had a chance to knock. 

“Hey,” she said. “How are you doing?”

“Fine,” he lied automatically. He wondered whether she had heard him crying in the middle of the previous night, when he’d woken from another blurred nightmare and expected to find himself under Neibolt, covered in Eddie’s blood.

“You can tell me anything,” she said, with an almost over-the-top earnestness. It made his insides squirm. It was as if she _ suspected _something.

“Yeah.” He shrugged. “I know.”

She stepped into the room and gently closed the door as she scrutinized his face. “You look...terrible,” she said.

“Thanks.”

“No, I know today was...whatever it was. And you look… Did the phone call go okay? You didn’t say...”

“What? Oh, yeah. Everything that couldn’t be canceled is postponed until the spring.”

“Well, that’s good. Right?”

“Yeah. It’s great. Did lunch go okay?”

“Lunch?”

“With Ben. You keep going to lunch with Ben.” His voice came out more irritated than teasing. As he had been for the entirety of the past week, he was exhausted. And, though he tried to shake it off—because they’d fucking killed Pennywise, after all, and he should be relieved or even _ proud _—sad. And Myra’s sudden appearance felt like a sucker punch. Or falling through a hidden trapdoor.

But that didn’t mean he had to be a jerk to Bev.

“Look, I’m sorry,” he said guiltily. “I—”

“No, it’s okay,” she interrupted, shaking her head. “We haven’t all been talking very much. The hospital is the center of everything right now, and we’re all so burnt out. But… Talk to me, if you need to.”

He exhaled carefully. “Well, I don’t need to. But thanks, Bev.”

She looked at him with the expression of a concerned parent trying to tease the truth out of a child.

“I’m okay,” he insisted. “Just go do whatever else you’re doing tonight and leave me alone. I’m fine.”

“Richie…”

He pointed at her sternly. “And if you’re going to have sex with Ben, do it in his room. I need my beauty sleep.”

She rolled her eyes and shut the door behind her.

Richie sighed. It was too early to actually go to sleep yet, but there wasn’t much else to do. Like Bev had said, he was burnt out from spending so many hours at the hospital. And even if he weren’t, it wasn’t like there was much to do in Derry. Unless the Falcon was still in business, he thought wryly. 

Stupid. This whole thing was so _ stupid _. None of this should’ve happened. And he shouldn’t have tried to get Steve to cancel everything. That was dumb. That was so fucking dumb. Eddie’s wife was here, and what if Eddie told all the others to leave now that she was here, and what if—what if—what if? Would Richie crawl back to Chicago and return to being just as pathetic and loveless and strung-out as he’d been before he’d left? Just go back to his life and pretend nothing had changed? That he’d remembered nothing? That he’d lost nothing?

_ Fuck that, man. _ He would stay. He would stay unless and until someone dragged him away.

He sat on the bed, back against the headboard, and burrowed his hands into his sweatshirt pockets. It was too warm to be wearing it every day like this, but it made him feel safer somehow. Contained. The leather jacket had been nicer, of course. But, alas… 

Forcing his attention away from his miserable thoughts (blood—lights—claws), he pulled out his phone and swiped pointlessly across the apps list. He hadn’t logged into any of his social media accounts on this phone yet. Probably best. He was prone to drunk-tweeting, and there was nothing acceptable to drunk-tweet about happening here in Derry. _ Mmmm frind in hosppital! Killd the CLown tho! Killedd him DEAD ! _Yeah, no. That was one PR nightmare Weatherly and co. were safe from.

And so, in the absence of Twitter and alcohol, he opened his contact list. But he never fucking talked to anyone. Like Bev had said, the Losers barely talked or spent time together if it wasn’t hospital-oriented. And he didn’t have anyone from Chicago he’d want to call to take his mind off things. Outside the Losers, this contact list had very few friends on it.

He swiped the contact list away and opened Eddie’s text thread. They didn’t message each other often, just short things regarding the logistics of visiting. _ Heading over with Bev _ and _ Hemovac drain is done _. No conversations, partly because Richie wasn’t sure what was even casual enough to discuss via text message and partly because, even if he did, it wouldn’t be terribly casual for Eddie, who spent all his time lying in bed and had to hold his phone inches from his face if he wanted to use it for anything.

He touched his thumbs to the keys and typed _ Hey dude _, then hesitated before finally hitting send.

He put the TV on then, as a distraction, not because he was interested to see what was on. Some channels had Hillary Clinton. Some had Bernie Sanders. Some had other things. He didn’t want to think about politics at the moment and settled on a cooking show. He was watching a lot of those lately.

His phone buzzed. He jolted to grab it off the bedspread, but the jolt flatlined when he saw it was a message from Steve.

_ Pioneer Center Feb 19th _

That was fast. He told Steve as much and set the phone back down. It buzzed again a few minutes later, but he didn’t check it immediately because he wasn’t especially interested in updates about the tour rescheduling efforts.

At the end of the show that was on, he slid to the edge of the bed, thinking he’d go down to the bar and get trashed enough to forget Eddie’s wife was here. He picked up his phone absently to check the notification.

Steve hadn’t followed up. The most recent message was from Eddie.

_ Are you guys still here? _

Ah, fuck.

_ You’re awake? _

Richie stared at his phone, certain that Eddie had disregarded the message for the inanity of the question. It was five whole minutes before a reply appeared.

_ Yeah. _

Richie considered responses. Should he ask if Eddie needed anything? But what could he need that _ Richie _ could give him? He couldn’t bring him food, couldn’t bring him anything to _ do _ really.

_ I’ll be up in a few _

That was vague enough that it could mean he was down in the cafeteria getting a coffee, even though it actually meant he was in his hotel room shoving his feet back into his shoes and grabbing his car keys.

No one was downstairs. Richie drove faster than he should have and got to the hospital in only a few minutes, as promised. He walked into the building at a brisk pace and hurried to the ICU.

“Hey,” he greeted Eddie breathlessly.

“Hi,” Eddie said. He appeared to be puzzling over Richie’s ragged inhalations.

“We can’t all have nurses teaching us how to breathe,” Richie deflected. (Eddie had to do deep breathing exercises about a zillion times a day to prevent post-op pneumonia.)

Eddie said nothing but still appeared confused.

“I was back at the Town House,” Richie confessed.

“Oh. Right.” Eddie looked faintly embarrassed.

“How long did you sleep for?” Richie asked conversationally as he settled into a chair. “You don’t usually conk out so early.”

“Yeah, I… Sorry,” Eddie said awkwardly.

“No, don’t be sorry.” Richie tapped the back of his hand against Eddie’s arm. A softer version of a playful shove. “Are you feeling okay?”

Eddie gave Richie an exasperated look. “What do you think?”

“I...have no idea. That’s why I asked.”

Eddie sighed. Fidgeted with the edge of the sheet. “I… Everything hurts, but not really?” he said quietly. “Like, it feels like it’s supposed to hurt, or something. Only it doesn’t, not until they roll me or touch something that’s messed up. And I’m pretty sure I don’t have legs.” He rolled his eyes. “I mean, I know I have them, because they’re there. But. Y’know.”

“Yeah.” Richie didn’t know. But he could attempt to imagine. “That seems...disconcerting.” He tried to keep his tone light, casual.

“Neuropathy might not present for months,” Eddie went on in an offhand way. “So that could still happen. It can be pretty resistant to treatment, too. And then instead of not having legs, I’ll have legs that are always on fire.”

The notion of Eddie having to withstand that kind of pain forever reached through his attempted casualness and punched Richie in the gut.

“Are _ you _ okay?” Eddie asked scrutinously. “You’re making a face.”

Richie cleared his throat. “I’m, uh, yeah. Fine,” he said. “Did your wife make you get a shave?”

“No,” Eddie answered, too quickly. “I think this is probably better,” he added. “Do you know how much bacteria is in beards?”

“That was _ hardly _ a beard,” Richie scoffed. “And anyway, they wash your face every night, don’t they? I mean, if you prefer the smooth look that’s fine, but I thought the stubble was good. Rugged.”

“Dickwad.” 

Richie gazed at Eddie’s face. Up close, it wasn’t exactly a _ clean _ shave. There were little missed patches wherever Eddie’s features curved too sharply. He supposed a nurse with a disposable razor did not a barber make.

“Wh...what?” Eddie said, sounding ruffled.

“Nothing,” Richie replied more softly than he intended to. “Just looking.”

Eddie made a small sound in his throat, like he was about to say something in response, but then he cast his eyes away from Richie and remained quiet.

“Anyway,” Richie said, trying to pull a jauntiness back into his tone, “if you were putting it off because you didn’t want a nurse to do it, you could’ve asked one of us.”

Eddie snorted, rolling his eyes before directing them back at Richie. “Yeah, like you could do it without cutting my face open.”

“Well, I didn’t mean _ me _ . But Bev or Mike or someone. They’d probably do a better job than _ that _.” And, not thinking, he reached out to one of the spots of surviving hair along Eddie’s jawline.

Eddie flinched. 

Richie recoiled his hand, a flash of nervousness and regret shooting through him. They stared at each other for a long moment. Richie could have sworn he spotted the EKG monitor spike higher for a second in his periphery, but he didn’t actually know how to read those things, so he dismissed the thought, turning his head away from Eddie and the machines.

“Uh, how was the visit with your wife?” he asked. The most dreaded conversation starter.

“Well,” Eddie began with a sigh, “when I submitted my medical leave form, which the company shouldn’t even need to call me about, they tried calling me. Only they called the landline, instead of my mobile.”

“You have a landline?” Richie asked, grinning incredulously as his eyes snapped back to Eddie. “It’s twenty-fucking-sixteen, Kaspbrak. Get it together.”

“What if the cell towers are down, fucknuts? What if the power’s out and your cellphone is dead and there’s an emergency?”

“Then I will nobly face my death,” Richie said dismissively. “God, you’re so neurotic.”

“I’m not _ neurotic _ ; I’m _ prepared _,” Eddie snapped.

Richie wanted to make a joke about the Xanax but bit his tongue. Eddie still hadn’t said anything about that.

“Anyway, she got the general idea that I was in the hospital here and that it was bad enough that I was definitely going to be missing work.”

“And she, what, got in the car and drove here to find you without calling first?”

“No, she… She called. I think.”

“You think?”

Eddie sighed. “She’s been calling constantly, pretty much ever since I hit the state line.”

“And you, what, ignored her calls? That’s kinda shitty, dude.”

“I _ didn’t _ ignore them. I talked to her on Friday. And Saturday. And I emailed her on Wednesday.”

“Do you know how ridiculous you sound? She’s been calling you constantly, and all you’ve done this week is send her one email?” Richie laughed. “So was she pissed about that when we met her, or is she like that all the time?”

Eddie frowned.

“Was she...not mad?” Richie asked awkwardly. “She seemed pretty fucking pissed, dude.”

“No, she’s just… It was okay. She, uh, she brought this file she has of all my medical information. Which is good to have. Allergies and stuff.”

“So you’re actually allergic to all the shit you say you’re allergic to?” Richie asked, ignoring how sad the _ No, she’s just _ part of the answer made him feel.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“I mean...have you ever eaten cashews? Or soy? Or gluten? God, I know you’ve eaten gluten. And eggs. Don’t even try to tell me you haven’t. But like, who told you you have all these food allergies?”

“What?”

“Eds, come on, where is that coming from?”

“My allergies? They’re from my immunoglobulin—” He lifted a hand in an irritated gesture and muttered, “Actually, I’m not even going to get into it.”

“Are you sure they're not from your wife being restrictive and weird?”

Eddie bristled at this. “Fuck you, Tozier.”

“Hey, woah woah woah. I just don’t get it, okay? I’m not even trying to be funny right now. I’m trying to understand why you’re insisting you’re deathly allergic to cashews and shit.” A flicker of vivid memory flashed across his mind. “Remember when your mom said you shouldn’t be allowed to run in gym class and Coach Black thought she was nuts? Remember how you don’t actually fucking need your placebo-ass inhaler? I’m just not buying it, Eddie.”

Eddie frowned again. “I...I do remember,” he muttered. Then his voice became firmer. “That doesn’t mean anything; _ allergies _ are real, and life-threatening.”

“Okay, yeah, but what would happen if you ate a cashew? Like, if _ you specifically _ ate a cashew.”

“I could _ die _,” Eddie snapped.

“Yeah, but what would _ happen _?” Richie pressed, leaning on the bed rail. “Like, you wouldn’t instantaneously die. That’s not how that shit works.”

Eddie was eyeing him sourly.

“You definitely ate stuff with cashews in it when we were kids, dude. Didn’t my mom use to put them in brownies? Which you ate?”

“Adult-onset allergies are a thing, dipshit.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Richie said, gesticulating with one hand. “So how did you find out you’re allergic to cashews and everything else? If you actually had a near-death experience from tree nuts, I feel like you would’ve told that story by now.”

Eddie huffed, drumming his fingers irritably on top of the sheet. “I had allergy testing done, okay?”

“How the hell do they test for allergies?” Richie asked, already reaching for his pocket, where Google was only a tap away on his phone.

“They prick your skin and put allergens on it to see if your skin gets inflamed,” Eddie answered grouchily. “You don’t have to fucking look it up; I know what I’m talking about.”

But Richie was already typing. “Skin...prick...allergy...testing...false...positive,” he narrated, then tapped the search button. “Up to sixty percent! ‘This test is not a good screening test.’ It literally says that on the Allergy and Asthma Foundation website, which is _ literally _ a thing.” 

“Get your gross fucking phone screen out of my face,” Eddie griped as Richie held it out to him.

“Fucking false positives, dude,” Richie persisted. “Unless you have more compelling information, I will die on this hill.”

“God, you are so fucking annoying,” Eddie muttered. “I went to a naturopathic immunotherapist, okay? It’s, like, her specialty.”

“I… You… What?”

“Jesus, what are you, deaf?”

“No, it’s…” Richie’s brain jammed. Eddie? Naturopathic medicine? The entities seemed antithetical, utterly at odds. It took him a few seconds to find words. “That’s...valid. I’ve run with some crunchy granola types, and some of that stuff is legit if the person actually knows what the fuck they’re doing.” He shook his head. “But, Eds, when did you start following that stuff?”

Eddie gave the slightest uncomfortable wriggle of his shoulders.

Richie’s own shoulders slumped as the reality clicked. “Your wife told you to go, didn’t she?” Great, his mother had instilled allopathic paranoia in him, and now his wife was topping it off with some naturopathic panic.

“What’s your point?”

“My point is that you’re an adult man with fake allergies,” Richie replied, slipping his phone back into his pocket and crossing his arms on the bed rail. “Sorry, dude. I’m pretty sure them’s the facts.”

“Are you seriously being like this right now?”

Richie shrugged. “Yeah, why not.”

They shared a few moments of disgruntled quiet, not making eye contact with each other as a nurse stopped in on her frequent rounds of the ICU. Richie rested his face on top of his arms. As the nurse stepped away, Eddie angled his head to meet Richie’s eyes.

“Why the hell are you staring at me?” Eddie asked, frowning.

“What the hell else am I supposed to look at?”

“You’re a fucking menace, you know that?” Eddie shot back, straightening his neck so that he faced the ceiling once more.

“Well, so are you,” Richie said around a yawn.

“Quit fucking yawning on me.”

“Why, are you allergic to yawns?”

“Richie, I swear to god, I will strangle you with my bare hands.”

“Oooh a threat? From the bedridden trauma patient?”

That earned him yet another glare.

And out of nowhere Richie was slapped with guilt again. Should he tell Eddie, _ Hey dude I feel like shit about what happened to you _? He could just say it, get it over with without making a thing of it. And then he wouldn’t have to wrestle the impulse back down ever again.

But before he could, Eddie made a huffy little grunting sound and turned his head away.

“How am I this fucking tired?” he grumbled. “All I do is fucking lie here.”

_ Yeah, and get poked and prodded constantly for examinations and blood draws. _“Haven’t all the doctors been saying rest is important for recovery? It’s probably normal to sleep a lot here.” 

Eddie didn’t answer.

“Should I clear out so you can sleep?” He wanted Eddie to say no.

Eddie sighed. “Yeah,” he admitted, sounding reluctant.

Richie stood. “Okay, well…” He bent slightly to put a hand on Eddie’s shoulder. “I’ll head out, I guess.” He let his hand linger longer than he usually did. Too long? “You can, uh, text me. If you want to.” What the hell was he saying?

Eddie raised a forearm, and Richie expected him to nudge Richie’s hand away. But instead he rested the back of his hand against the side of Richie’s arm. His expression projected a meek but sincere gratefulness, as it had after Richie’s absolute wreck of a You’re Braver Than You Think speech.

“Okay,” he said quietly.

“So, uh.” Richie awkwardly took his hand back, tucked it back into a pocket. “See you tomorrow.”

“Yeah.” Eddie lowered his hand and laced his fingers together over his midsection. “I’ll be...here,” he said sardonically. Then, in a frustrated and bashful tone, he went on, “Thanks for coming, Richie. You shouldn’t have… I mean, I was just… You didn’t need to.”

Richie swallowed. “No problem, dude,” he said.

“Well...goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”

**Author's Note:**

> I am on tumblr as [killersnotmonster](https://killersnotmonster.tumblr.com/). Feel free to say hello!
> 
> All feedback is appreciated, from concrit to keyboard smashing.


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